iiiiTiiiWi 


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THE  LIBRARY 
OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 
RIVERSIDE 


'Books  by  "Brander  Matthews 

These  Many  Years,  Recollections  of  a  New 
Yorker 


Biographies 

Shakspere  as  a  Playwright 
Moliere,  His  Life  and  His  Works 


Essays  and  Criticisms 

The  Principles  of  Playmaking 

French  Dramatists  of  the  19th  Century 

Pen  and  Ink,  Essays  on  subjects  of  more 

or  less  importance 
Aspects  of  Fiction,  and  other  Essays 
The  Historical  Novel,  and  other  Essays 
Parts  of  Speech,  Essays  on  English 
The  Development  of  the  Drama 
Inquiries  and  Opinions 
The  American  of  the  Future,  and  other 

Essays 
Gateways  to  Literature,  and  other  Essays 
On  Acting 
A  Book  About  the  Theater 


THE   PRINCIPLES   OF 
PLAYMAKING 


JHE  PRINCIPLES  OF 
PLAYMAKING 

AND  OTHER  DISCUSSIONS  OF 
THE  DRAMA 


BY 
BRANDER   MATTHEWS 

PROFESSOR   OF   DRAMATIC    LITERATURE    IN    COLUMBIA    UNIVERSITY 
MEMBER   OF   THE   AMERICAN   ACADEMY   OF   ARTS   AND    LETTERS 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 

1919 


Copyright.  1919,  by 
Brander  Matthews 

Published  September,  igtg 


TO 
GUSTAVE  LANSON 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 

I  The  Principles  of  Playmaking  . 

I !  How  to  IVrite  a  Play     .... 

III  On  Putting  Literature  into  the  Drama 

IV  Three  Theorists  of  the  Theater  . 

V  //  Shakspere  Should  Come  Back    . 
VI  Shaksperian  Stage-Traditions  . 
VII    The  Pleasant  Land  of  Scribia  . 
VIII    'Hamlet'  with  Hamlet  Left  Out 

IX  Situations  Wanted 

X   The  Playwright  and  the  Player 
XI   Irish  Plays  and  Irish  Playwrights 
XII   The  Conventions  of  the  Music-Drama 
XIII    The  Simplification  of  Stage-Scenery 
XIV  The  Vocabulary  of  the  Show-Business 
XV  Matthew  Arnold  and  the  Theater    . 
XVI  Memories  of  Edwin  Booth  . 


I 

31 

44 
60 

93 

99 

133 

147 
163 
182 
196 
214 
230 
251 
265 
286 


THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  PLAYMAKING 


OF  all  the  theorists  of  the  theater  in  the  nine- 
teenth century  Francisque  Sarcey  was  the 
shrewdest.  He  had  an  incomparable  intimacy 
with  the  drama  and  an  insatiable  desire  to  dis- 
cover the  principles  of  the  art  of  playmaking. 
Yet  when  he  once  set  out  to  discuss  these  prin- 
ciples he  felt  obliged  to  begin  by  disclaiming  any 
intention  of  issuing  a  series  of  edicts  to  be  obeyed 
to  the  letter  by  all  intending  pla)Avrights.  "  Most 
readers,"  he  declared,  "when  you  speak  to  them 
of  a  treatise  on  the  art  of  the  theater,  or  to  ex- 
press it  more  simply,  as  did  our  fathers,  when  you 
speak  to  them  of  the  Rules  of  the  Drama,  believe 
that  you  have  in  mind  a  code  of  precepts  by  the 
aid  of  which  one  is  assured,  if  he  writes,  of  com- 
posing a  piece  without  faults,  or  if  he  criticizes, 
of  being  able  to  place  his  finger  precisely  on  every 
defect."  Sarcey  went  on  to  confess  that  this  be- 
lief in  the  all-sufficiency  of  a  sequence  of  dramatic 
dogmas  was  peculiarly  French  and  that  it  was  a 
long  establisht  tradition.  He  cited  the  case  of  the 
I 


THE   PRINCIPLES  OF   PLAYMAKING 

worthy  Abbe  d'Aubignac  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, who  promulgated  a  code  for  dramatic  liter- 
ature (translated  into  English  under  the  signifi- 
cant title  of  the  'Whole  Art  of  the  Stage'),  and 
who  was  tempted  later  to  compose  a  tragedy 
"according  to  his  own  formula  and  made  it  pro- 
digiously tiresome," — a  misadventure  which  has 
"never  cured  the  public  of  its  belief  in  the  efficacy 
of  Rules." 

Then  Sarcey  declared  that  he  did  not  purpose 
to  formulate  any  Rules,  to  promulgate  any  Laws, 
to  mint  any  Maxims  or  to  present  any  Precepts; 
what  he  proposed  to  himself  was  to  seek  out  the 
underlying  Principles  of  playmaking  by  a  disin- 
terested attempt  to  ascertain  the  actual  basis  of 
the  drama  and  by  seizing  upon  the  essential  con- 
ditions of  this  art,  which  differentiate  it  from  all 
the  other  arts.  And  he  found  this  actual  basis  in 
the  fact  that  "the  word  play  carries  with  it  the 
idea  of  an  audience.  We  cannot  conceive  of  a 
play  without  an  audience."  All  the  accessories  of 
performance,  scenery  and  costumes,  the  stage  it- 
self and  its  footlights,  these  the  drama  can  get 
along  without,  but  the  audience  is  indispensable. 
"A  dramatic  work,  whatever  it  may  be,  is  designed 
to  be  witnest  by  a  number  of  persons  united 
and  forming  an  audience;  that  is  its  very  es- 
sence; that  is  one  indispensable  condition  of  its 
existence.  The  audience  is  the  necessary  and 
inevitable  condition  to  which  dramatic  art  must 


THE   PRINCIPLES  OF   PLAYMAKING 

accommodate  its  means."  As  it  is  almost  impos- 
sible to  gather  exactly  the  same  audience  two  or 
three  times  in  succession,  and  as  no  audience  can 
be  kept  interested  for  more  than  a  few  hours  at  a 
sitting,  it  is  a  principle  of  playmaking  that  the 
dramatist  must  devise  a  dominating  action  and 
that  he  must  condense  his  story,  dealing  only 
with  its  most  interesting  moments  and  present- 
ing it  shorn  of  all  negligible  details.  And  as  an 
audience  is  a  crowd,  composed  of  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  men,  the  dramatist  must  deal  with 
subjects  appealing  to  collective  human  nature 
and  he  must  eschew  themes  of  a  more  limited 
attraction. 

Other  critics  before  Sarcey  had  suggested  that 
the  playwright  had  always  to  pay  attention  to 
the  desires  and  to  the  demands  of  the  playgoers. 
In  the  sixteenth  century  Castelvetro  had  had 
more  than  a  glimpse  of  this  truth.  In  the  seven- 
teenth century  Moliere  had  boldly  declared  that 
the  one  duty  of  the  dramatist  was  to  please  the 
public;  and  Corneille  had  said  the  same  thing 
but  characteristically  with  more  caution.  In  the 
eighteenth  century,  Marmontel,  a  playwright 
himself  as  well  as  a  theorist  of  the  theater,  had 
asserted  that  the  first  duty  of  the  dramatist  was 
"to  move  the  spectators,  and  the  second  is  to 
move  them  only  in  so  far  as  they  are  willing  to  be 
moved,"  which  will  depend  "on  the  disposition 
and  the  manners  of  the  people  to  whom  appeal  is 
3 


THE   PRINCIPLES  OF   PLAYMAKING 

made,  and  on  the  degree  of  sensibility  they  bring 
to  the  theater."  And  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
— and  after  Sarcey  had  started  his  inquiry — 
Brunetiere  insisted  that  "a  play  does  not  begin 
to  exist  as  a  play  except  before  the  footlights,  by 
virtue  of  the  collaboration  and  of  the  complicity 
of  the  public,  without  which  a  play  never  has  been 
and  never  can  be  anything  more  than  a  mere 
literary  exercise." 

Sarcey  had  made  his  declaration  of  faith  in 
1876;  and  ten  years  later,  Bronson  Howard, 
wholly  unfamiliar  with  the  French  critic's  articles, 
expounded  a  doctrine  almost  identical,  in  the  lec- 
ture which  he  entitled  the  'Autobiography  of  a 
Play.'  He  called  attention  to  the  fact  that 
/Eschylus,  Sophocles  and  Euripides  "did  not 
create  the  laws  of  dramatic  construction"  since 
"  those  laws  exist  in  the  passions  and  sympathies 
of  the  human  race.  They  existed  thousands  of 
years  before  the  Father  of  the  Drama  was  born, — 
waiting,  like  the  other  laws  of  nature  to  be  dis- 
covered and  utilized  by  man."  The  American 
playwright  declared  that  the  dramatist  could 
succeed  only  by  obeying  these  laws,  altho  "no 
man  knows  much  about  them.  .  .  .  When  all 
the  mysteries  of  humanity  have  been  solved,  the 
laws  of  dramatic  construction  can  be  codified 
and  clearly  explained;  not  until  then."  It  is 
true  that  "  a  few  general  principles  have  been  dis- 
covered by  experiment  and  discussion";  and 
4 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

yet  every  playwright  is  under  the  imperative 
necessity  of  obeying  all  the  principles  of  the  art, 
even  those  he  has  not  discovered.  Fortunately, 
"the  art  of  obeying  them  is  merely  the  art  of 
using  your  common  sense  in  the  study  of  your  own 
and  other  people's  emotions." 

II 

In  the  epitaph  written  by  Pope  we  are  told  that 

Nature  and  Nature's  laws  lay  hid  in  night: 
God  said,  "Let  Newton  be !"  and  all  was  light. 

But  Newton's  Law  is  only  one  of  Nature's  laws; 
it  declares  only  one  of  the  principles  which  control 
the  visible  universe;  and  no  Newton  has  yet 
arisen  to  declare  the  principles  which  control 
dramatic  construction.  These  principles  however 
have  been  obeyed  unwittingly  by  all  the  great 
dramatists,  ancient  and  modern.  The  Rules  laid 
down  tentatively  or  arbitrarily  by  the  theorists  of 
theater  are  but  groping  efforts  to  grasp  the  un- 
dying principles  which  we  can  seize  only  unsatis- 
factorily, which  "exist  in  the  passions  and  sym- 
pathies of  the  human  race,"  and  which  are  never 
completely  disclosed  to  anyone,  not  even  if  he  is 
possest  of  the  piercing  insight  of  Aristotle.  No 
doubt,  this  is  just  as  true  of  painting  and  of  sculp- 
ture as  it  is  of  the  drama.  The  principles  of  the 
pictorial  art  and  of  the  plastic  art  have  been  de- 
5 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

clared  with  certainty  and  with  finaHty  by  no 
critic,  not  even  by  Lessing. 

The  principle  of  Nature  which  causes  an  apple 
to  fall  from  a  tree  is  eternal;  it  existed  and  did 
its  work  long  before  Newton  was  able  to  formulate 
the  Law  of  Gravitation;  and  it  would  continue 
to  exist  and  to  do  its  work  even  if  some  later  and 
greater  Newton  should  some  day  be  able  to  prove 
that  Newton's  Law  is  not  just  what  he  asserted 
it  to  be.  What  is  true  of  Newton's  Law  in 
mechanics  is  true  also  of  Gresham's  Law  in  finance 
and  of  Grimm's  Law  in  philology,  it  is  no  less 
true  of  Brunetiere's  Law  in  the  drama.  The  stal- 
wart French  critic  contended  that  what  differen- 
tiates the  drama  from  the  epic  is  the  necessity  the 
play  is  under  of  presenting  strong-willed  creatures 
engaged  in  a  tense  struggle  of  clashing  volitions; 
and  the  principles  of  dramatic  construction,  what- 
ever they  may  be,  remain  just  what  they  were, 
and  what  they  had  always  been  before  Brunetiere 
made  his  suggestive  and  instructive  effort  to  re- 
duce one  of  these  principles  to  a  formally  stated 
Law.  In  other  words,  Newton's  Law  and  Gresh- 
am's and  Grimm's  and  Brunetiere's  are  not 
strictly  speaking  "laws"  at  all;  they  are  only 
working  hypotheses,  which  seem  to  square  with 
the  fact  so  far  as  we  have  been  able  to  ascertain  it. 

The  Rules  of  the  Drama  which  were  formulated 
in  the  classicist  code  by  the  supersubtle  Italian 
critics  of  the  Renascence,  Castelvetro,  Mintorno 
6 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

and  the  rest,  were  accepted  by  the  profest  critics 
of  all  the  other  nations,  altho  the  professional 
playwrights  of  England  and  of  Spain  refused  to 
be  driven  into  the  triple-barred  cage  of  the  Unities 
and  declined  to  deprive  themselves  of  the  privilege 
of  commingling  the  comic  with  the  tragic  or  to 
force  themselves  to  fill  out  the  artificial  framework 
of  five  acts.  Lessing  battered  a  breach  in  the 
classicist  citadel;  and  it  was  finally  stormed  and 
sacked  by  the  fiery  French  romanticists  of  1830. 
The  Rules  of  the  classicists  were  elaborated  by 
pedants,  who  had  no  intimate  acquaintance  with 
the  actual  theater,  where  alone  the  principles  of 
dramatic  construction  can  be  seen  at  work.  It 
is  more  than  probable  that  Castelvetro  and  Min- 
torno  had  neither  of  them  ever  seen  a  good  play 
well  acted  before  any  other  audience  than  an  in- 
vited assembly  of  dilettants;  and  it  is  no  won- 
der that  their  Rules  were  found  to  lack  validity 
when  put  to  the  test  in  the  theater  itself. 

Far  more  valuable  are  the  rough-and-ready 
Maxims,  the  bread-and-butter  Precepts,  which 
the  old  stager  is  forever  impressing  upon  the 
young  playwright.  These  Precepts  and  these 
Maxims,  handed  down  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion, studio-traditions  so  to  speak,  are  valid,  as 
far  as  they  go.  They  are  efforts  to  codify  the 
practice  of  contemporary  playwrights  and  to 
put  into  useful  words  the  common  sense  of  these 
playwrights  and  their  study  of  their  own  emotions 
7 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF   PLAYMAKING 

and  of  the  emotions  of  their  fellows.  They  may 
not  be  adequate  expressions  of  the  eternal  prin- 
ciples of  playmaking,  which  exist  and  have 
always  existed  "in  the  passions  and  sympathies 
of  the  human  race";  but  they  stand  on  a  solider 
foundation,  whatever  their  imcompleteness,  than 
any  of  the  alleged  Rules  of  the  pedantic  theorists, 
ignorant  of  the  actual  theater  with  its  actual 
audience. 

"  Never  keep  a  secret  from  the  audience"  ! — 
"Never  try  to  fool  the  audience!" — "Begin  in 
the  thick  of  the  action,  and  quit  when  you  are 
thru!" — "Show  every  thing  that  is  important 
to  the  plot;  don't  tell  about  it  merely,  but  let  the 
spectators  see  it  for  themselves!" — these  are  all 
monitions  of  indisputable  importance;  and  the 
'prentice  playwright  will  do  well  to  get  them  by 
heart  and  to  take  them  to  heart.  He  will  even 
find  profit  in  recalling  the  advice  of  the  wily  old 
stage-manager  to  J.  R.  Planche:  "If  you  want 
to  make  the  British  public  understand  what  you 
are  doing,  you  must  tell  them  that  you  are  going 
to  do  it, — later  you  must  tell  them  that  you  are 
doing  it — finally  you  must  tell  them  that  you 
have  done  it;  and  then — confound  them  !  perhaps 
they  will  understand  you!"  This  cynical  and 
contemptuous  saying  reveals  itself  as  only  a  bru- 
tal over-statement  of  the  undying  principle  that 
the  audience  needs  ever  to  know  what  has  hap- 
pened so  that  it  may  have  its  interest  aroused 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

in  what  is  about  to  happen.  This  is  the  principle 
which  imposes  upon  the  dramatist  the  duty  of 
always  being  so  clear  that  he  cannot  be  misunder- 
stood even  by  the  most  inattentive  spectator. 

The  difficulty  of  perceiving  the  eternal  prin- 
ciples of  the  dramatic  art,  and  the  distinction 
between  these  eternal  principles  and  the  rule-of- 
thumb  precepts,  will  be  found  clearly  exprest  in 
Weil's  'Etudes  sur  le  Drame  Antique,'  from 
which  this  suggestive  passage  may  be  borrowed: 
"  Poetry  has  its  laws,  natural,  necessary,  inherent 
in  the  nature  of  things;  it  has  also  its  traditional 
rules,  variable,  due  to  habit,  consecrated  by  in- 
heritance. The  natural  laws  scarcely  need  to  be 
declared  as  they  can  be  understood  without  ef- 
fort; but  easy  to  seize  they  are  none  the  less  diffi- 
cult to  declare.  Genius  follows  them  instinc- 
tively; ordinary  talent  may  hear  them  set  forth 
without  being  able  to  conform  to  them.  The 
traditional  rules  may  also  have  a  foundation;  but 
they  are  for  a  time  only,  and  they  may  become  a 
restraint  for  the  artist,  a  curb  rather  than  a  salu- 
tary check;  they  cannot  be  devined,  but  must  be 
formulated  to  have  the  force  of  law." 


Ill 

No  one  of  these  rule-of-thumb  admonitions  is 
older  than  that  which  advises  the  dramatist  to 
show  everything  that  is  important  and  to  make  it 
9 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

take  place  before  the  eyes  of  the  spectators.  We 
can  find  it  set  forth  in  the  shrewd  epistle  of 
good  counsel  that  Horace  wrote  to  the  son  of 
an  old  friend  when  that  youth  began  to  manifest 
literary  ambitions: — 

The  events,  which  plays  are  written  to  unfold. 
Are  either  shown  upon  the  stage,  or  told. 
Most  true,  whate'er's  transmitted  thru  the  ear 
To  mind  and  heart  will  never  come  so  near. 
As  what  is  set  before  the  eyes,  and  each 
Spectator  sees,  brought  full  within  his  reach. 
Yet  do  not  drag  upon  the  stage  what  might 
Be  much  more  fitly  acted  out  of  sight ; 
Much,  too,  there  is  which  'twill  be  always  well 
To  leave  the  actor's  well-graced  speech  to  tell. 
Let  not  Medea  kill  her  boys  in  view, — 

If  things  like  these  before  my  eyes  be  thrust, 
I  turn  away  in  sceptical  disgust. 

There  was  no  living  Latin  drama  when  Horace 
made  these  suggestions;  and  he  was  proclaiming 
the  practice  of  the  Greek  dramatic  poets,  when  he 
warned  the  youthful  playmaker  not  to  let  Medea 
destroy  her  children  in  view  of  the  spectators. 
The  actors  of  the  Attic  drama  were  raised  aloft 
on  thick-soled  boots  and  they  wore  towering 
masks,  and  therefore  they  could  not  indulge  in 
any   violent   gestures;    they   could   neither   kill 


THE   PRINCIPLES  OF    PLAYMAKING 

nor  be  killed  without  danger  of  tripping  and  of 
thereby  disarranging  the  mask,  a  misadventure 
which  would  be  unseemly.  Yet  this  reservation, 
scarcely  more  than  suggested  by  Horace,  was  by 
the  Italian  theorists  tightened  into  a  rigorous 
restriction  of  action.  In  England,  for  example, 
the  first  five-act  tragedy  in  blank  verse  is  'Gor- 
buduc,'  in  which  little  or  nothing  happens  before 
the  eyes  of  the  spectators,  altho  the  story  itself 
is  filled  with  violent  horrors,  all  of  which  are  de- 
corously and  dully  narrated  by  subsidiary  char- 
acters. And  in  France  the  classicists  came  in 
time  almost  to  eschew  visible  action  and  to 
abound  in  rhetorical  description  of  things  not 
seen. 

In  Victor  Hugo's  famous  preface  to  his  unacted 
and  unactable  'Cromwell,'  an  essay  which  may 
be  accepted  as  the  Declaration  of  Independence  of 
the  romanticists,  he  protested  against  the  dead- 
ening results  of  obedience  to  this  law  by  the 
feebler  followers  of  Voltaire  and  Racine.  "In- 
stead of  actions  we  have  narratives,  instead  of 
pictures  we  have  descriptions.  Solemn  person- 
ages placed,  like  the  ancient  chorus  between  us  and 
the  drama,  come  to  tell  us  what  is  being  done  in 
the  temple,  in  the  palace,  in  the  public  square, 
until  we  are  often  tempted  to  cry  out  to  them, 
'Really, — then  take  us  there!  It  seems  to  be 
amusing;  it  ought  to  be  interesting  to  see!'  To 
which  they  would  no  doubt  reply,  '  It  is  possible 
II 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

that  it  would  amuse  and  interest  you,  but  that  is 
not  the  question:  we  are  the  guardians  of  the 
dignity  of  Melpomene  in  France !'  And  there 
you  are!" 

Yet  the  French  classicists  might  have  avoided 
getting  themselves  into  this  tight  box  if  they  had 
paid  less  attention  to  the  later  critics,  even  to 
Voltaire  himself,  and  if  they  had  gone  back  to 
Corneille,  the  father  of  French  tragedy.  Corneille 
was  a  born  playwright,  if  ever  there  was  one,  with 
an  instinctive  apprehension  of  the  principles  of 
playmaking.  He  was  a  very  mitigated  classicist; 
in  fact,  he  was  plainly  a  classicist  against  his  will 
and  only  in  consequence  of  the  strictures  of  the 
French  Academy  on  his  earliest  masterpiece,  the 
'Cid/  In  his  third  '  Discourse  on  Dramatic  Art* 
Corneille  showed  a  clear  understanding  of  the 
principle  which  Horace  had  declared.  "The  poet 
is  not  obliged  to  put  on  the  stage  all  the  subsidiary 
actions  which  bring  about  the  main  action;  he 
ought  to  choose  those  which  are  most  advantage- 
ous to  be  seen,  from  the  beauty  of  the  spectacle 
or  from  the  vigor  and  the  vehemence  of  the  pas- 
sions which  they  produce,  or  from  any  other  ad- 
vantage they  may  have.  And  he  ought  to  hide 
the  others  off  the  stage,  letting  them  become 
known  to  the  spectator  either  by  a  narration  or 
by  some  other  device  of  the  art." 

Here,  with  intuitive  certainty,  Corneille  laid 
his  finger  on  the  reasons  why  certain  parts  of  the 
story  should  be  shown  in  action, — those  which  are 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

interesting  to  the  audience  "from  the  vigor  and 
the  vehemence  of  the  passions  they  produce." 
Here  he  was  anticipating  Robert  Louis  Steven- 
son's assertion  that  tiie  drama  is  most  dramatic 
when  it  sets  before  the  spectators  the  great  pas- 
sionate crises  of  existence,  "when  duty  and  in- 
cHnation  come  nobly  to  the  grapple."  Here,  he 
was  justifying  in  advance  Brunetiere's  Law  that' 
the  stuff  out  of  which  drama  can  be  made  most 
effectively,  is  the  stark  assertion  of  the  human 
will  and  the  collision  of  contending  desires. 
Here,  once  more,  he  was  on  the  verge  of  discover- 
ing Sarcey's  most  significant  contribution  to  the 
theory  of  the  theater, — that  in  any  story  there 
are  certain  episodes,  interviews,  moments,  which 
the  spectator  must  see  for  himself  and  which  if  not 
shown  will  leave  the  audience  dumbly  disap- 
pointed by  their  absence.  Sarcey  called  these  the 
scenes  that  must  be  shown,  the  scenes  a /aire;  and 
Mr.  William  Archer  has  called  them  the  Obliga- 
tory Scenes. 

There  is  no  characteristic  of  the  born  play- 
wright more  obvious  than  this, — that  he  makes 
an  immediate  and  an  unerring  choice  between  the 
Obligatory  Scenes,  which  the  spectators  will 
expect  to  have  placed  before  their  eyes,  and  the 
less  significant  parts  of  the  plot,  as  to  which  the 
audience  is  quite  willing  to  be  informed  "either 
by  a  narrative  or  by  some  other  device  of  the 
art."  In  the  drama,  as  in  all  the  other  depart- 
ments of  poetry,  the  half  is  often  greater  than  the 
13 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

whole.  Indeed,  since  the  Middle  Ages  the  drama- 
tist has  never  sought  to  put  on  the  stage  all  the 
details  of  his  story;  he  has  felt  himself  forced  to 
make  a  choice  and  to  focus  the  attention  of  the 
audience  upon  the  moments  which  are  really 
worth  while. 

IV 

In  the  first  of  his  '  Discourses  on  Dramatic  Art,' 
Corneille  had  plaintively  remarkt,  "  It  is  certain 
that  there  are  Laws  of  the  drama,  since  it  is  an 
art;  but  it  is  not  certain  what  these  laws  are." 
And  even  when  we  have  good  reason  to  believe 
that  we  have  at  last  laid  hold  of  an  indisputable 
principle,  we  can  never  be  quite  assured  as  to  its 
proper  application.  Horace  advised  the  avoid- 
ance of  the  offensively  horrible; 

Let  not  Medea  kill  her  boys  in  view. 

For  the  reasons  already  suggested  the  Greeks  had 
to  refrain  from  the  exhibition  of  any  murder, 
altho  they  seem  to  have  had  a  mechanical  device 
for  bringing  into  view  the  gory  corpse  after  the 
victim  had  been  slain  behind  closed  doors.  The 
French,  governed  by  the  decorum  of  the  court 
of  Louis  XIV,  were  content  that  all  scenes  of 
murderous  violence  should  be  left  to 

The  actor's  well-graced  speech  to  tell. 

But  we  who  speak  English  do  not 

Turn  away  in  sceptical  disgust 
14 


THE    PRINCIPLES    OF    PLAYMAKING 

when  Richard  and  Richmond  cross  swords  or 
when  Macbeth  and  Macduff  at  last  stand  face  to 
face  to  fight  to  the  death.  Nor  are  we  revolted 
by  the  murder  of  Desdemona,  painful  tho  it  is 
to  witness,  nor  by  the  suicide  of  Othello.  To 
some  of  us,  no  doubt,  there  comes  a  feeling  of 
satiety,  in  the  last  act  of '  Hamlet,'  when  the  stage 
is  littered  with  the  bodies  of  character  after 
character  removed  from  this  life  by  battle,  murder 
and  sudden  death;  and  there  are  other  plays  of 
Shakspere's  at  the  performance  of  which  some  of 
us  are  a  little  annoyed  by  the  prodigality  of  as- 
sassination. We  are  well  aware  that  this  or  that 
character  is  doomed  to  die;  but  we  would  not 
object  if  we  were  spared  from  beholding  the  deep 
damnation  of  his  taking  off  and  if  his  necessary 
demise  had  been  made  known  to  us  "either  by  a 
narrative  or  by  some  other  device  of  the  art." 

It  is  because  /Eschylus  and  Shakspere  were 
born  playwrights,  masters  of  all  the  devices  of 
the  art,  that  they  were  each  of  them  enabled  to 
move  us  more  powerfully  by  an  unseen  murder, 
by  an  assassination  behind  closed  doors,  than 
we  could  have  been  moved  if  we  had  been  forced 
to  see  the  fatal  stroke  descend  and  the  smitten 
victim  drop.  In  the  'Agamemnon'  we  know 
that  Clytemnestra  has  gone  within,  resolved  to 
slay  the  husband  who  had  wronged  her  and  whom 
she  has  wronged,  and  we  listen  in  dread  suspense, 
not  daring  to  hope  that  she  will  abandon  her 
deadly  purpose;  we  wait  until  we  hear  the  wail- 
15 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

ing  outcry  of  the  betrayed  hero,  taken  unawares 
and  treacherously  stricken  in  his  own  house. 
The  only  other  moment  in  all  drama  which  sur- 
passes this  in  thick  intensity  of  expectant  horror 
is  that  when  Macbeth,  goaded  by  the  stern  pur- 
pose of  his  ambitious  wife,  takes  up  the  daggers 
and  creeps  into  the  inner  chamber  where  Duncan, 
his  king  and  his  guest,  lies  sleeping  the  sleep  from 
which  he  is  never  to  awaken.  It  is  the  outcry  of 
Agamemnon  which  tells  us  that  he  has  been 
slain;  and  Duncan  makes  no  outcry.  We  know 
that  he  has  been  slain  only  when  Macbeth  comes 
out  from  the  room  which  he  entered  a  brave  man 
and  which  he  leaves  a  craven  from  that  time  on. 
That  an  unseen  murder,  which  we  are  made  to 
feel  impending  and  inevitable,  is  more  effective 
dramatically  we  discover  when  in  the  same  play 
we  are  witnesses  of  the  later  assassination  of 
Banquo,  which  discloses  itself  merely  a  brutal 
and  vulgar  slaughter,  devoid  of  horror  and  of 
terror. 

Jules  Lemaitre  once  wrote  a  criticism  of  Maeter- 
linck's tragedy  of  childhood,  the  '  Death  of  Tin- 
tagiles';  and  he  began  by  quoting  Horace's 

Whate'er's  transmitted  thru  the  ear 
To  mind  and  heart  will  never  come  so  near 
As  what  is  set  before  the  eyes,  and  each 
Spectator  sees,  brought  full  within  his  reach. 

Then  the  brilliant  French  critic  declared  that 
"this  is  true, — and  yet  it  is  not  true.    Yes,  often, 
16 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

what  is  set  before  our  eyes,  strikes  us  more  forci- 
bly than  what  is  merely  told;  yes,  action  is  ordi- 
narily more  moving  than  narrative.  But  what  is 
infinitely  more  pathetic  than  an  action  told  or 
seen,  is  an  action  which  is  divined.  Victor  Hugo 
has  said  that  nothing  is  more  interesting  than  a 
wall  behind  which  something  is  taking  place." 
And  here  Lemaitre  and  Hugo  suggest  to  us  the 
explanation  why  the  deaths  of  Agamemnon  and 
Duncan,  which  happened  out  of  our  sight  behind 
a  wall,  are  more  moving  than  if  we  had  seen  them 
with  our  own  eyes,  because  in  each  case  we  divine 
the  dire  event  about  to  happen  beyond  our  vision. 
Lemaitre  remarkt  that  he  found  this  blank  wall 
in  play  after  play  of  Maeterlinck's;  and  he  dis- 
covered also  in  Maeterlinck  an  unfailing  power  of 
forcing  us  to  divine  what  was  taking  place  behind 
the  wall.  Poor  little  Tintagiles  had  fled  up  the 
stairs  of  the  tower  till  he  comes  to  an  iron  gate. 
His  feeble  voice  calls  for  his  sister,  whom  we  see 
trying  in  vain  to  open  the  gate.  At  last,  we 
hear  the  sound  of  the  little  body  falling  on  the 
far  side  of  the  door.  "And  this  is  terrible,  be- 
cause we  have  seen  nothing,  not  the  child  shivering 
with  fright,  not  her  who  is  not  ever  named,  the 
wicked  old  woman  whose  hundred  year  old  hands 
strangle  the  child  so  slowly  that  he  has  time  to 
glue  his  mouth  to  the  iron  bars." 

Plainly  enough  when  Horace  asserts  that  what 
is  heard  is  less  effective  than  what  is  seen  and 
when  the  old  stager  bids  the  novice  to  "show 
17 


THE    PRINCIPLES    OF    PLAYMAKING 

everything  important  and  let  the  spectators  see 
it  themselves,"  they  have  neither  of  them  been 
able  to  do  more  than  draft  a  rough-and-ready 
Rule,  which  is  true  and  yet  not  true.  They  have 
not  succeeded  in  laying  firm  hold  on  a  principle 
so  certain  that  it  is  true  in  all  cases,  indisputable 
and  inexorable. 


For  example,  that  is  a  sound  Rule  which  bids 
the  playwright  not  to  keep  a  secret  from  the  audi- 
ence. Bronson  Howard  once  told  me  that  the 
one  of  the  dullest  evenings  he  ever  spent  in  the 
theater  was  due  to  the  playwright's  having  hidden 
from  the  spectators  the  actual  facts,  thus  putting 
them  upon  a  false  trail.  The  play  was  a  drama- 
tization of  Miss  Braddon's  novel '  Henry  Dunbar,' 
made  by  Tom  Taylor.  A  daughter  knows  that 
her  father  has  been  wronged  by  Henry  Dunbar 
and  has  been  led  thereby  into  a  life  of  crime.  She 
receives  a  letter  from  her  father  announcing  his 
intention  of  seeking  Henry  Dunbar  (who  has  just 
returned  to  England  after  a  long  stay  in  India), 
and  of  having  it  out  with  his  old  enemy.  And 
after  that  she  hears  nothing  more  from  her  father, 
who  has  vanisht  from  the  face  of  the  earth.  She 
has  no  doubt  that  Henry  Dunbar  has  made  away 
with  him;  so  she  sets  out  in  pursuit.  But 
Henry  Dunbar  evades  her  again  and  again,  just 
when  they  are  on  the  point  of  meeting.  At  last 
she  corners  him;  and  in  the  Henry  Dunbar  who 
i8 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

Stands  at  bay  before  her  she  recognizes  her 
father — who  has  killed  his  enemy  and  assumed 
that  enemy's  name  and  that  enemy's  fortune. 
The  disclosure  is  effective,  in  its  way;  it  procures 
a  shock  of  surprise;  but  the  total  effect  is  far  less 
than  it  would  have  been  if  the  spectator  had 
known  the  facts  from  the  first.  In  that  case  there 
would  have  been  no  shock  of  surprize,  but  there 
would  have  been  a  steadily  increasing  intensity 
of  suspense  as  the  daughter  came  nearer  to  the 
father  whom  she  loved  and  whom  she  was  to  find 
an  assassin. 

In  Lessing's  implacable  dissection  of  Vol- 
taire's 'Merope,'  he  admits  that  "our  surprize  is 
greater  if  we  do  not  know  with  certainty  that 
/^gisthus  is  /^gisthus  before  Merope  knows  it. 
But  what  a  poor  amusement  is  this  surprize ! 
And  why  need  the  poet  surprize  us  ?  He  may  sur- 
prize his  characters  as  much  as  he  likes;  and  we 
shall  derive  our  pleasure  therefrom,  even  if  we 
have  long  foreseen  what  befals  them  so  unex- 
pectedly. Nay,  our  sympathy  will  be  the  more 
vivid  and  the  more  vigorous,  the  longer  and  more 
certainly  we  have  foreseen  it.  .  .  .  Let  the 
characters  knot  the  complication  without  knowing 
it;  let  it  be  impenetrable  for  them;  let  it  bring 
them  without  their  foreknowledge  nearer  and 
nearer  to  the  untying.  If  the  characters  feel 
emotion,  the  spectators  will  yield  to  the  same 
feelings." 

When  Lessing  wrote  this  he  was  a  bold  man, 
19 


THE    PRINCIPLES    OF    PLAYMAKING 

for  he  was  confessing  a  heresy.  He  records  his 
dissent  from  the  Rule  laid  down  by  a  majority 
of  those  who  had  written  on  the  dramatic  art  and 
who  insisted  that  the  spectators  should  be  kept 
guessing  at  the  final  solution,  never  permitted  to 
foresee  it.  Even  so  practical  a  playwright  as 
Lope  de  Vega  held  that  it  was  wise  to  conceal 
the  way  in  which  the  plot  was  to  be  wound  up, 
so  that  the  audience  might  not  be  tempted  to 
get  up  and  go  out  as  soon  as  the  end  of  the  com- 
plication became  visible.  Voltaire,  also  a  prac- 
tical playwright,  thought  that  Sophocles  should 
have  kept  the  spectators  of  his  'CEdipus*  in  an 
ignorance  of  the  secret  as  total  as  that  which 
envelopt  the  characters.  It  was  only  toward 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  that 
Sophocles  began  to  be  praised  for  the  very 
quality  for  which  he  had  been  blamed  in  the 
eighteenth. 

What  was  flagrant  heresy  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury is  accepted  as  establisht  dogma  in  the 
twentieth  century.  Yet  even  today  the  Rule 
that  a  secret  must  not  be  kept  from  the  audience 
is  only  a  rule-of-thumb.  It  is  not  one  of  the 
permanent  principles  of  playmaking;  and  a 
dextrous  dramatist  may  sometimes  see  his  profit 
in  breaking  the  Rule,  if  by  so  doing  he  can 
achieve  what  appears  to  him  an  intensification  of 
emotional  interest.  Paul  Hervieu  called  one  of 
his  pieces  the  'Enigma';  and  he  concealed  from 

20 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

the  spectators  almost  up  to  the  falHng  of  the  final 
curtain  which  of  two  sisters  had  been  guilty  of 
admitting  a  detected  lover  by  night;  but  it  may 
be  doubted  whether  the  result  of  his  experiment 
proved  it  to  be  justified.  Perhaps  he  would  have 
heightened  his  appeal  if  we  had  known  from  the 
beginning  which  was  the  guilty  wife.  "  By 
means  of  secrecy,"  said  Lessing,  "a  poet  effects 
a  short  surprize,  but  in  what  an  enduring  dis- 
quietude he  could  have  maintained  us  if  he  had 
made  no  secret  about  it  I  Whoever  is  struck 
down  in  a  moment,  I  can  pity  only  for  a  moment. 
But  how  if  I  expect  the  blow  ? — How  if  I  can  see 
the  storm  brewing  and  threatening  for  some 
time  over  the  head  of  a  character?" 

None  the  less  are  there  occasions  where  the  Rule 
has  to  be  broken,  in  the  interest  of  the  play  as  a 
whole, — that  is  to  say,  in  the  interest  of  the 
spectators  themselves.  In  'Henry  Dunbar'  the 
Rule  not  to  keep  a  secret  from  the  spectators  was 
violated  to  the  disadvantage  of  the  play.  But 
in  Bronson  Howard's  own  piece,  'Young  Mrs. 
Winthrop,'  it  was  violated  to  the  advantage  of 
the  play, — and  it  was  deliberately  violated,  so 
its  author  told  me,  because  it  conflicted  with  one 
of  the  eternal  principles  of  playmaking.  Young 
Mrs.  Winthrop  is  jealous  because  her  husband  is 
frequently  visiting  a  woman  whose  antecedents 
are  doubtful.  This  brings  about  a  dispute  so 
violent    that    Mrs.    Winthrop    leaves    her    hus- 


THE    PRINCIPLES  OF    PLAYMAKING 

band's  house.  In  the  final  act,  she  learns  that 
her  suspicions  were  unfounded,  since  her  hus- 
band's visits  to  her  supposed  rival  were  due  to  a 
highly  honorable  motive.  But  the  author  had 
kept  this  motive  a  secret  from  the  spectators  and 
had  allowed  them  to  believe  that  the  jealousy  of 
the  wife  was  probably  justified.  When  I  askt 
him  why  he  had  done  this,  he  explained  that  he 
needed  to  have  his  audience  sympathize  with  his 
heroine  when  she  left  her  husband  and  that 
the  spectators  must  see  things  thru  her  eyes  and 
believe  the  worst.  Having  only  the  information 
that  the  wife  had,  they  would  feel  that  her  de- 
parture from  her  husband's  home  was  fully  war- 
ranted. If  they  had  known  that  the  husband 
was  innocent  of  any  wrongdoing  they  would  have 
credited  their  own  knowledge  to  the  wife  and 
they  would  have  held  her  to  be  unreasonable  if 
she  broke  with  him  for  a  suspicion  which  they  had 
seen  to  be  unfounded.  And  in  this  case,  the 
spectators  did  not  resent  having  been  kept  in  the 
dark,  for  they  were  not  formally  told  that  Win- 
throp  was  guilty, — they  were  merely  left  in  doubt; 
and  therefore  they  were  ready  enough  to  be 
pleased  when  he  was  relieved  from  suspicion  and 
reunited  to  his  wife. 

VI 

That  it  is  unsafe  to  pin  faith  to  the  Rules 
which  happen  to  be  current  in  our  own  time  and  to 


THE    PRINCIPLES    OF    PLAYMAKING 

feel  confident  that  they  contain  the  law  and  the 
gospel  was  made  manifest  in  the  first  half  of 
the  second  decade  of  the  twentieth  century, 
when  there  happened  to  be  produced  in  New  York 
half-a-dozen  plays  characterized  by  an  honest 
effort  to  find  new  methods  of  expression  and  to 
broaden  the  scope  of  theatrical  presentation.  In 
*A  Poor  Little  Rich  Girl'  the  spectators  were 
made  to  see  scenes  and  characters  that  existed 
only  in  the  ignorant  imaginings  of  a  child  in  the 
grip  of  fever.  In  'Seven  Keys  to  Baldpate'  the 
clever  author  played  a  characteristically  clever 
trick  upon  the  audience  itself,  most  unexpectedly 
taking  them  into  his  workshop.  In  'On  Trial' 
we  were  invited  to  behold  in  three  successive 
acts,  events  which  took  place  long  before  the  be- 
ginning of  the  play  itself,  and  the  event  thus 
shown  in  the  second  act  was  earlier  than  that 
shown  in  the  first  act  and  the  event  shown  in  the 
third  act  was  earlier  than  that  shown  in  the 
second, — thus  taking  us  further  and  further 
backward  toward  the  beginning  of  the  story.  In 
the  'Phantom  Rival'  we  had  presented  before  us 
the  fond  day-dreams  of  a  fanciful  woman, — day- 
dreams made  actually  visible  to  us,  forced  to  take 
on  a  concrete  existence,  and  peopled  by  four 
contradictory  possibilities  of  a  single  character, 
creations  called  into  life  only  by  the  brooding 
imagination  of  the  heroine.  And  in  the  *  Big 
Idea'  we  were  invited  to  witness  the  successive 
23 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

Steps  of  the  invention,  the  construction,  and  the 
writing  of  a  play,  which  is  to  be  built  on  the 
dangerous  predicament  in  which  the  chief  char- 
acter finds  himself  in  the  piece  which  is  actually 
being  performed;  and  this  big  idea  is  carried  so 
far  that  at  last  we  discover  that  the  play  which  has 
been  put  together  before  our  eyes  is  the  very 
play  which  is  being  performed  before  our  eyes. 

In  all  these  dramas,  serious,  comic  and  serio- 
comic, four  of  them  American  in  authorship  and 
one  of  them  freely  Americanized  from  a  Hungarian 
original,  there  was  a  deliberate  intention  to 
achieve  novelty  of  form.  They  were  all  charac- 
terized by  ingenuity  of  invention;  and  at  least 
two  of  them  can  be  credited,  more  or  less,  with  the 
loftier  quality  of  imagination.  They  might  be 
termed  new  departures  in  the  drama,  due  to  the 
desire  of  their  several  authors  to  desert  the  beaten 
path  and  to  explore  fresh  fields.  They  were  all 
of  them  more  or  less  successful  on  the  stage;  that 
is  to  say,  the  authors  were  able  to  carry  the  public 
with  them  along  these  hitherto  untrodden  trails. 
Indeed,  it  may  as  well  be  admitted  that  a  consider- 
able share  of  the  popularity  of  these  pieces  was 
directly  due  to  the  attraction  exerted  upon  the 
spectator  by  the  freshness  of  treatment  which  is 
their  most  salient  quality.  These  plays  seemed 
to  not  a  few  among  those  who  discuss  the  drama 
to  prove  that  the  wisest  of  men  was  less  wise  than 
was  his  wont  when  he  insisted  that  there  was 
24 


THE    PRINCIPLES    OF    PLAYMAKING 

nothing  new  under  the  sun.  And  the  favorable 
reception  of  this  series  of  daring  experiments  in 
stagecraft  was  the  more  surprizing  since  the 
theater  itself  has  always  been  considered  ultra- 
conservative,  clinging  desperately  to  ancient 
landmarks,  and  struggling  blindly  against  all 
efforts  to  overturn  its  traditions  and  to  over- 
throw its  customs. 

There  is  no  occasion  for  surprize,  therefore, 
that  we  should  have  been  told  vehemently  and 
vociferously  that  all  the  traditions  of  the  theater 
were  to  be  abandoned,  that  all  the  customs  of  the 
stage  were  to  be  renounced,  that  all  the  Rules  of 
the  Drama  were  hereafter  to  be  broken,  that  all  the 
Laws  hitherto  held  binding  upon  the  playwright 
were  to  be  repealed,  and  that  all  the  principles 
of  playmaking  were  suddenly  reduced  to  chaotic 
confusion.  To  many  ardent  aspirants  for  drama- 
turgic victory  it  seemed  almost  as  if  a  bomb  had 
been  suddenly  exploded  in  the  temple  of  the 
drama,  shattering  the  tables  of  the  law  and  bring- 
ing down  the  walls  in  ruin,  A  skilful  and  success- 
ful American  playwright  was  quoted  as  asserting 
that  "the  day  is  not  far  distant  when  there  will 
be  no  stage  conventions,  so  far  as  the  audience  is 
concerned."  A  newspaper  reviewer  of  current 
plays  felt  emboldened  to  declare  that  the  profes- 
sor of  dramatic  literature  in  one  of  our  leading 
universities  must  be  greatly  grieved  by  the  success 
of  one  of  the  five  plays  already  cited — a  play  writ- 
25 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

ten  by  one  of  the  professor's  former  students — 
because  it  violated  all  the  doctrines  about  the 
drama,  which  the  professor  had  been  discussing 
year  after  year. 

Now,  if  this  happened  to  be  true,  and  if  the 
public  should  accept  a  play  which  violated  the 
theories  to  which  this  professor  of  dramatic 
literature  had  drawn  the  attention  of  his  classes, 
then  this  would  go  far  toward  disestablishing  the 
validity  of  these  theories  and  it  would  put  the  pro- 
fessor in  a  situation  so  awkward  as  to  demand 
explanation,  if  not  apology  to  all  his  former  pu- 
pils. But  fortunately  for  this  professor  these 
assertions  as  to  the  complete  upsetting  of  the 
doctrines  hitherto  expounded  by  those  who  have 
sought  to  penetrate  into  the  secrets  of  stagecraft, 
were  not  well  founded.  They  were  the  result  of 
a  failure  to  perceive  the  wide  distinction  between 
the  Rules  and  the  Laws  which  had  won  acceptance 
for  the  moment  and  the  eternal  principles  of  play- 
making,  which  are  unchanging  because  they  are 
essential  to  the  existence  of  the  art. 


VII 

Since  the  five  plays  in  which  there  were  nov- 
elties of  construction  succeeded  in  pleasing  the 
playgoers,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  no  one  of  them 
violated  any  of  the  eternal  principles  of  playmak- 
ing.  But  did  any  one  of  them  really  contradict 
26 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

any  of  the  generally  accepted  Precepts  of  the 
contemporary  theater? 

It  is  difficult  to  see  any  reason  why  anybody 
should  suppose  that  either  the  '  Poor  Little  Rich 
Girl/  or  the  'Phantom  Rival,'  broke  any  of  the 
Rules,  unexpected  as  might  be  their  calling  upon 
the  spectator  to  behold  things  that  exist  only 
in  the  imagination  of  one  of  the  characters — 
things  that  did  not  happen  actually  but  which 
that  character  merely  believed  to  be  happening. 
The  authors  of  these  two  plays  were  skilful  and 
careful;  they  made  elaborate  preparation;  they 
led  us  forward  step  by  step;  they  told  us  what 
they  were  going  to  do,  what  they  were  doing,  and 
what  they  had  done.  They  were  so  clear  and  so 
straightforward  that  they  compel  us  to  follow 
them.  What  they  askt  us  to  accept  might  be 
very  unusual  and  in  itself  not  easy  to  accept; 
but  they  so  presented  it  that  it  was  not  difficult 
for  us  to  accept.  After  all,  the  sole  novelty 
lay  in  their  asking  us  to  witness  what  happened 
in  a  day-dream,  just  as  a  host  of  earlier  play- 
wrights had  invited  the  playgoer  of  the  past  to 
behold  what  happened  in  a  dream.  The  'Victor- 
ine'  of  four  score  years  ago  was  not  the  earliest 
of  dream-plays  and  the  '  Romance'  of  more  recent 
years  will  not  be  the  last.  In  the  'Phantom 
Rival'  and  the  'Poor  Little  Rich  Girl'  the  actual 
novelty  was  not  as  new  as  it  may  have  appeared 
to  the  younger  generation  of  playgoers;  and  the 
27 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

authors  had  not  needed  to  break  any  of  the  tra- 
ditional Precepts  of  the  theater. 

The  authors  of  'Seven  Keys  to  Baldpate'  and 
of  the  '  Big  Idea'  were  equally  mindful  of  the 
principles  of  the  art,  and  they  did  not  try  to 
"fool  the  audience."  In  the  'Big  Idea/  which 
was  the  more  daring  of  the  two  amusing  dramas, 
the  authors  took  the  spectator  into  their  con- 
fidence from  the  beginning.  We  were  made  to 
see  the  hero  and  the  heroine  start  to  write  the  very 
play  in  which  they  are  characters.  The  device 
was  dangerous,  and  difficult  of  acceptance;  but 
the  successive  scenes  were  so  clear  and  they  were 
so  logically  related,  each  growing  out  of  its  pre- 
decessor, naturally  and  irresistibly,  that  we  could 
not  help  surrendering  ourselves  to  the  delight  of 
watching  the  authors  win  their  wager.  Here 
again,  we  were  told  what  they  were  going  to  do, 
what  they  were  doing,  and  what  they  had  done. 
Even  the  appeal  of  the  heroine  in  the  final  act 
directly  and  personally  to  the  assembled  audience 
asking  it  to  like  the  play  which  had  been  put 
together  before  its  eyes  and  in  which  she  was  a 
character — even  this  was  not  the  flagrant  novelty 
that  it  may  have  seemed  to  some.  Its  most  im- 
mediate predecessor  is  to  be  found  in  'Peter 
Pan,'  but  it  is  a  device  for  evoking  laughter, 
which  Moliere  employed  in  the  'Miser'  and 
Aristophanes  in  the  '  Frogs.' 

There  still  remains  to  be  considered  'On  Trial,' 
28 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

which  was  hailed  as  the  most  subversive  of  all 
these  plays,  since  "it  told  its  story  backward." 
If  On  Trial'  had  told  its  story  backward,  it  would 
have  broken  the  Rule  which  prescribes  that  a 
playwright  must  devise  an  action  with  a  beginning, 
a  middle  and  an  end,  and  that  he  must  present 
these  several  parts  in  strict  sequence.  But,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  author  of  'On  Trial'  did  not 
tell  its  story  backward;  he  told  it  straight  forward, 
altho  he  took  the  liberty  of  showing  us  in  succes- 
sive acts  fragments  of  his  story  which  had  taken 
place  before  the  moment  when  he  had  chosen  to 
begin  it.  His  play  set  before  us  a  man  on  trial 
for  his  life.  The  scene  of  every  act  was  laid 
in  the  court-room,  with  the  judge  on  the  bench, 
the  prisoner  at  the  bar,  the  jury  in  the  box  and 
the  opposing  counsel.  In  the  first  act,  the  widow 
of  the  murdered  man  was  called  to  the  witness 
stand  and  she  began  to  give  her  testimony, 
when  suddenly  there  was  a  dark  change  and  we 
were  made  to  see  in  action  the  episode  as  to 
which  she  was  about  to  testify;  and  when  we  had 
seen  this,  then  there  was  another  dark  change, 
after  which  we  found  her  on  the  stand  finishing 
her  testimony.  In  the  second  act,  the  little 
daughter  of  the  prisoner  was  called  as  a  witness; 
and  again  we  were  made  spectators  of  the  events 
as  to  which  she  was  supposed  to  be  testifying. 
In  the  third  act  when  the  wife  of  the  prisoner  was 
summoned  to  the  stand,  we  were  once  more  in- 
29 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

vited  to  be  spectators  of  the  thing  itself  instead 
of  being  merely  listeners  to  her  testimony.  If 
these  three  witnesses  had  been  allowed  to  give 
their  evidence  in  their  own  words,  no  one  would 
have  suggested  that  the  story  was  being  told 
backward,  because  every  playgoer  knows  that  in 
every  play  there  are  events  which  happened  long 
before  the  play  began  and  which  can  be  made 
known  to  the  audience  only  by  a  telling  after  the 
event  has  happened.  The  author  of  'On  Trial' 
did  not  break  any  of  the  Rules;  he  was  merely 
inventive  enough  and  ingenious  enough  to  devise 
a  new  way  of  making  visible  to  us  in  the  present 
what  had  taken  place  in  the  past.  The  novelty 
was  in  the  method  of  presentation  and  not  in  any 
departure  from  the  Precepts  generally  accepted 
in  the  theater. 

(1914-16.) 


30 


II 

HOW  TO  WRITE  A  PLAY 


THE  title  of  this  paper  may  seem  presumptu- 
ous. Who  am  I  that  I  should  presume  to 
proffer  instruction  in  the  art  of  the  playwright,  as 
difficult  as  it  is  dangerous?  If  this  hurrying 
twentieth  century  of  ours  were  only  the  leisurely 
eighteenth  century,  when  everybody  had  all  the 
time  there  was,  a  fit  name  for  this  paper  might 
be:  "A  few  tentative  Suggestions  for  those  who 
propose  to  commence  Playwrights,  garnered  from 
the  Experience  of  an  old  Playgoer."  That  may 
be  a  more  accurate,  as  it  is  a  more  cautious, 
description  of  the  intent  of  the  present  paper; 
but  it  is  a  little  too  long  drawn  to  serve  as  a 
title  for  an  article  on  a  topic  of  immediate  inter- 
est to  an  immense  number  of  ambitious  aspirants. 
It  has  been  calculated  by  an  imaginative  statis- 
tician that  there  are  now  in  these  United  States 
nearly  one  hundred  thousand  persons — men, 
women  and  children — who  are  eager  to  write 
plays,  believing  that  the  stage  door  is  the  easiest 
entrance  to  the  Temple  of  Fortune  and  to  the 
31 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

Hall  of  Fame.  Whether  or  not  this  estimate  is 
scientifically  accurate  may  not  be  disclosed  even 
when  we  have  the  figures  of  the  new  census. 
Quite  possibly  it  is  not  at  all  inflated,  since  it  al- 
lows only  one  apprentice  playmaker  to  every 
thousand  of  the  population.  At  all  events,  there 
are  so  many  of  them  that  advertisements  have  ap- 
peared of  late  addressed  especially  to  those  igno- 
rant of  dramatic  art  and  yet  ambitious  to  acquire 
it.  "  Playwriting  Taught  by  Mail"  is  an  alluring 
temptation  which  is  probably  charming  subscrip- 
tions from  the  pockets  of  many  an  eager  youth. 

Whether  or  not  playwriting  can  really  be 
taught  by  mail  is  a  question  that  need  not  here 
be  discust.  What  is  not  a  question  is  that  it 
can  be  taught,  even  if  these  advertisers  may 
not  be  capable  of  teaching  it.  Playwriting  is  an 
art  and  every  art  must  be  learnt;  and  whatever 
must  be  learned  can  be  taught — ^whether  it  is  the 
art  of  painting  a  portrait,  of  riming  a  lyric,  of 
making  a  speech  or  of  writing  a  play.  It  is  true 
that  the  poet  is  born,  not  made;  but  it  is  also 
true  that  after  he  is  born  he  has  to  be  made. 
What  he  has  to  say  may  be  the  gift  of  God,  but 
how  he  is  to  say  it  depends  upon  the  training  of  the 
bard  himself.  In  every  artist  we  can  perceive  a 
man  with  both  a  message  and  a  method.  His 
message  may  be  innate  in  him,  but  his  method 
he  has  to  acquire  from  others.  The  painters 
have  recognized  this;  and  they  promptly  go  to 
32 


HOW   TO   WRITE    A    PLAY 

school  to  the  older  practitioners  of  the  craft  that 
they  may  imbibe  its  secrets  and  be  shown  how  to 
set  a  palette  and  how  to  bring  out  on  the  canvas 
before  them  the  things  they  see  in  the  world 
around  them.  Every  painter  is  the  pupil  of  one 
or  more  painters  of  an  earlier  generation;  and  he 
is  proud  of  it  as  a  proof  that  he  has  served  his 
apprenticeship  and  learnt  his  trade  properly. 

Whatever  has  to  be  learnt  can  be  taught;  but 
it  can  be  taught  best  by  those  who  have  practised 
it  themselves.  The  instructors  in  the  art  schools 
are  painters,  not  art  critics  or  historians  of  art. 
And,  if  playwriting  is  to  be  taught  with  the  same 
success  that  painting  has  been  taught,  this  can 
be  accomplisht  only  by  the  older  playwrights 
instructing  the  younger  and  laying  bare  before 
them  the  art  and  mystery  of  the  drama.  If  a 
school  of  playwriting  were  to  be  opened  the 
proper  instructors  would  be  Mr.  Gillette  and  Mr. 
Augustus  Thomas  in  the  United  States,  and 
Sir  Arthur  Pinero  and  Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones 
in  Great  Britain.  In  France,  more  than  half-a- 
century  ago,  there  was  for  a  while  something  very 
like  a  school  of  playwriting  kept  by  a  master  play- 
wright, Scribe — that  is  to  say.  Scribe  liked  to 
collaborate  and  he  was  hospitable  to  the  young 
men  who  brought  him  suggestions  for  plays. 
He  showed  these  young  men  how  their  sugges- 
tions could  be  turned  to  profit  on  the  stage. 
And  in  this  collaboration  the  young  men  could 
33 


THE    PRINCIPLES  OF   PLAYMAKING 

not  fail  to  get  an  insight  into  Scribe's  method 
and  to  discover  some  of  the  reasons  why  Scribe's 
plays  were  incessantly  reappearing  in  all  the 
theaters  of  Europe. 

And  yet  a  mere  critic,  a  mere  historian  of  the 
drama,  may  on  occasion  be  able  to  proffer  ad- 
vice, not  so  much  to  the  point,  perhaps,  as  would 
be  that  of  the  successful  playwright,  but  not  with- 
out a  certain  value  of  its  own,  however  inferior. 
When  anyone  has  been  intensely  interested  in  the 
drama  for  more  than  forty  years,  and  when  he 
has  been  an  assiduous  playgoer  in  many  cities, 
and  when  he  has  taken  advantage  of  every  op- 
portunity to  discuss  the  problems  of  playmaking 
with  the  many  dramatists  he  has  had  the  good 
fortune  to  count  among  his  friends — it  may  not 
be  unreasonable  for  him  to  assume  that  it  is  in 
his  power  to  call  attention  to  a  few  of  the  more 
obvious  points  which  the  ambitious  young  dram- 
atic author  must  ever  bear  in  mind.  He  may 
not  be  justified  in  advertising  "Playwriting 
Taught  by  Mail,"  but  he  ought  to  be  able  to  make 
a  few  elementary  suggestions. 

The  first  of  these  obvious  considerations  for 
the  benefit  of  the  'prentice  playwright  is  that  he 
ought  to  devote  himself  to  playgoing.  Nearly 
forty  years  ago,  when  I  hoped  that  1  might  be- 
come a  professional  playwright,  1  introduced 
myself  to  the  late  Eugene  Nus,  the  author  of  the 
French  originals  of  Charles  Reade's  '  Hard  Cash/ 
34 


HOW   TO   WRITE   A    PLAY 

Boucicault's  'Streets  of  New  York/  and  Tom 
Taylor's  'Ticket-of-Leave  Man/  Tho  the  play 
plotted  as  a  result  of  this  introduction  was 
never  actually  written,  one  remark  of  the  veteran 
French  playmaker  may  be  recalled:  "Young 
man,  if  you  want  to  write  for  the  theater  you  must 
go  to  the  theater."  Every  writer  of  plays  must 
be  intimately  familiar  with  the  theater  of  his  own 
time  and  his  own  country,  since  that  is  the  only 
theater  where  he  can  hope  to  have  his  plays  pro- 
duced. He  must  understand  its  organization  and 
its  mechanism.  He  must  study  earnestly  not  only 
the  theater  itself  but  the  actors — and,  above  all, 
the  audiences. 

He  must  go  to  see  the  successful  plays  of  the 
season  again  and  again,  in  the  endeavor  to  dis- 
cover the  causes  of  their  success  and  the  means 
whereby  this  success  has  been  attained.  The 
first  time  he  is  a  spectator  at  the  performance  of 
a  play  he  is  likely  to  be  merely  a  spectator — carried 
away  like  the  rest  of  the  audience  by  the  story 
itself,  by  the  interest  of  the  plot,  by  the  excite- 
ment of  the  successive  episodes.  When  he  gets 
home  he  will  do  well  to  analize  his  impressions 
and  to  ask  himself  how  it  was  that  these  impres- 
sions were  produced.  Then  he  will  do  well  to  go 
again  to  verify  this  analysis  and  to  clear  up  the 
points  that  may  have  been  left  in  doubt.  At 
this  second  visit  he  ought  to  be  able  to  perceive  a 
little  more  clearly  the  method  of  the  author — 
35 


THE    PRINCIPLES    OF    PLAYMAKING 

the  reasons,  for  example,  why  a  certain  interview 
is  in  the  fourth  act  and  not  in  the  third;  and  the 
reasons  why  certain  parts  of  the  story  are  shown  in 
action  and  certain  other  parts  are  merely  nar- 
rated or  otherwise  explained  to  the  audience. 
He  ought  to  note  especially  how  the  dramatist 
has  conveyed  to  the  spectators  the  information 
about  what  has  happened  before  the  play  began, 
not  necessary  to  be  shown  in  action  and  yet  ab- 
solutely necessary  if  the  actual  story  is  to  be  fol- 
lowed with  understanding. 

Then  he  may  go  a  third  time — and  a  fourth — 
until  he  has  mastered  the  construction  of  the  play; 
whereupon  he  may  turn  his  attention  from  the 
play  to  the  audience,  marking  when  the  spectators 
are  fidgety  and  when  they  are  swept  along  by  the 
resistless  rush  of  the  action.  When  he  perceives 
that  some  of  the  audience  are  looking  at  their  pro- 
grams, or  whispering  to  their  neighbors,  he  had 
better  look  again  at  the  play  to  discover,  if  he  can, 
what  made  the  interest  relax  at  that  moment. 

Nor  should  he  neglect  the  failures  and  devote 
himself  wholly  to  the  successes.  Many  an  inter- 
esting lesson  can  be  derived  from  a  failure.  The 
student  can  at  least  try  to  ascertain  why  it  failed. 
He  can  let  it  teach  him  what  to  avoid.  He  can 
watch  the  behavior  of  the  scant  audience;  and  this 
will  sometimes  be  as  illuminating  as  the  conduct 
of  the  spectators  at  a  successful  play.  Every 
dramatist,  the  mightiest  as  well  as  the  less  signi- 
36 


HOW   TO   WRITE   A    PLAY 

ficant — Shakspere  and  Moliere,  no  less  than  Sar- 
dou  and  Belasco — has  always  kept  his  eye  on  his 
audience.  If  he  does  not  desire  above  all  things 
to  interest  and  to  move  and  to  hold  the  audience, 
then  he  has  no  business  with  playwriting. 

It  is  his  first  duty  to  find  out  what  the  play- 
goers of  his  own  time  and  his  own  country  enjoy, 
for  that  is  what  he  will  have  to  give  them  in  his 
plays — even  if  he  may  be  able  also  to  give  them 
something  more.  When  he  has  learned  this  art 
he  may  express  himself  and  deliver  his  own  mes- 
sage— if  he  has  one;  but  he  has  always  to  keep  his 
audiences  in  mind  and  to  remember  that  they 
have  to  be  interested  in  the  play,  or  his  message 
will  never  reach  its  destination.  He  has  to  feel 
with  his  spectators,  so  that  he  may  make  them 
feel  with  him.  This  does  not  mean  any  "writing 
down  to  the  vulgar  mob";  but  it  does  mean 
"writing  broad  for  the  people  as  a  whole." 

'Hamlet,'  for  example,  is  Shakspere's  master- 
piece, rich  in  poetry  and  lofty  in  philosophy;  but 
it  is  also  a  very  amusing  play  for  the  gallery-boy, 
who  cares  little  either  for  poetry  or  for  philosophy, 
but  who  is  delighted  by  the  ghost,  by  the-play 
within-the-play  and  by  the  duel  with  the  poisoned 
swords.  It  has  been  asserted  that  if  'Hamlet' 
should  be  performed  in  a  deaf-and-dumb  asylum 
the  inmates  would  be  able  to  follow  the  story  with 
jnterest  by  means  of  their  eyes  alone.  A  wise 
critic  once  declared  that  the  skeleton  of  a  good 

37 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

play  is  a  pantomime.  'Tartuffe'  for  example  is 
Moliere's  masterpiece,  a  marvelously  rich  por- 
trayal of  human  nature;  and  it  has  a  panto- 
mime for  its  backbone.  When  the  Comedie- 
Fran^aise  went  to  London,  forty  years  ago,  Sar- 
cey  picked  out  'Tartuffe'  as  the  one  play  of  all 
the  repertory  that  produced  the  most  certain  effect 
upon  the  English  playgoers,  since  its  story  was 
so  clear  that  it  could  be  followed  even  by  those 
ignorant  of  French. 

If  the  successful  play  of  the  hour  happens  to  be 
publisht  the  aspirant  will  do  well  to  get  it  and  to 
compare  the  impression  he  had  in  the  theater 
itself  with  that  made  by  the  printed  page  in  the 
library.  This  will  help  to  show  him  how  much 
of  the  effect  of  a  play  is  due  to  the  performance — 
to  the  acting,  to  the  looks  and  gestures,  to  the 
pauses  and  to  the  sense  of  suspense.  And  it  will 
probably  startle  him  to  discover  how  little  of  the 
effect  is  due  to  external  literary  merit,  to  mere 
writing,  to  rhetoric;  and  how  much  of  this  effect 
is  the  result  of  the  story  itself,  of  the  building  up 
of  the  situations  so  that  one  seems  to  arise  nat- 
urally out  of  another;  and  of  the  bold,  sharp  con- 
trast of  character  with  character.  "Fine  writing" 
is  nowadays  at  a  discount;  and  in  the  theater 
action  is  all  important.  This  is  no  new  dis- 
covery, for  Aristotle  said  it  many  centuries  ago, 
insisting  that  story  and  construction  were  ab- 
solutely necessary,  whereas  poetry  was  only  a 
38 


HOW  TO   WRITE   A    PLAY 

decoration  or  an  accompaniment.  A  good  play 
must  have  literary  merit,  of  course;  but  it  must 
be  drama  before  it  is  literature.  It  has  to  suc- 
ceed on  the  stage  or  it  will  never  be  read. 

The  ambitious  aspirant  will  find  advantage, 
also,  in  analizing  contemporary  publisht  plays 
that  he  has  not  seen  acted  and  in  trying  to  guess 
at  their  effectiveness  in  the  theater.  Sardou  once 
told  a  reporter  how  he  had  studied  Scribe's  pieces 
in  the  endeavor  to  spy  out  the  secrets  of  stage- 
craft. "  I  used  to  take  a  three-act  play  that  I 
did  not  know  anything  about.  1  read  only  the 
first  act;  and,  after  this  exposition  of  the  story 
and  of  the  characters,  1  closed  the  book  and  then 
I  tried  to  build  up  for  myself  the  rest  of  the  play 
that  Scribe  had  erected  on  that  foundation. 
And  I  was  satisfied  with  myself  only  when  I  had, 
by  a  sheer  exercise  of  logic,  succeeded  in  con- 
structing a  plot  pretty  close  to  that  which  I 
afterward  found  in  the  second  and  third  acts." 
Scribe  is  now  a  little  old-fashioned;  but  today  a 
novice  would  find  it  very  suggestive  if  he  took 
Pinero's  'Mid-Channel,'  Jones'  'Liars,'  or  Clyde 
Fitch's  'Girl  with  the  Green  Eyes,'  and,  after 
studying  the  first  act  very  carefully,  tried  to  out- 
line the  play  that  is  the  necessary  conclusion. 

To  say  this  is  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  the 

art  of  the  dramatist  is  very  like  the  art  of  the 

architect.    A  plot  has  to  be  built  up  just  as  a 

house  is  built — story  after  story;  and  no  edifice 

39 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

has  any  chance  of  standing  unless  it  has  a  broad 
foundation  and  a  soHd  frame.  What  the  char- 
acters say  is  less  important  than  what  they  do, 
and  still  less  important  than  what  they  are.  After 
the  steel  frame  is  once  erected  there  will  be  time 
enough  to  consider  the  decoration  and  to  design 
the  stained-glass  windows.  The  story,  the  plot, 
the  theme — these  are  the  essential  things.  Vol- 
taire says  somewhere  that  the  success  of  a  play 
depends  on  the  choice  of  its  subject.  And  whether 
a  subject  is  good  or  not  depends  on  the  audience. 
Subjects  that  were  excellent  for  Sophocles  and  for 
Shakspere  are  no  longer  satisfactory  to  modern 
spectators,  who  have  a  very  different  outlook  on 
the  world  from  that  of  the  Athenians  or  the 
Elizabethans.  The  spectator  today  wants  to 
see  himself  on  the  stage — himself  and  his  fellows — 
the  kind  of  folks  he  knows  by  personal  experience. 
And  it  is  only  by  choosing  a  subject  of  this  sort 
that  the  novice  can  give  his  work  what  the  late 
Augustin  Daly  used  to  call  "contemporaneous 
human  interest." 

A  play  needs  to  have  a  theme;  this  theme 
must  be  interpreted  by  a  story;  and  the  story 
must  be  stiffened  into  a  plot.  The  plot  may  be 
simple  and  straightforward,  free  from  complica- 
tions and  complexities;  but  it  must  deal  with  a 
struggle.  It  must  show  the  clash  of  contending 
desires.  This  marks  the  sharp  difference  between 
the  novel  and  the  play.  Alone  in  the  library' 
40 


HOW   TO   WRITE    A    PLAY 

we  are  often  glad  to  read  a  novel  which  sets  be- 
fore us  merely  a  group  of  characters,  revealing 
themselves  by  word  of  mouth;  but  in  the  theater, 
when  we  are  assembled  together,  we  are  bored  if 
we  are  not  shown  a  definite  action,  a  steadily 
moving  story  in  which  we  can  follow  the  strife^ 
of  opposing  forces.  A  novel  may  delight  us  by 
merely  exhibiting  human  beings;  but  a  play  is 
not  likely  to  please  us  unless  we  can  sympathize 
with  the  effort  of  one  of  those  human  beings  to 
attain  a  definite  purpose.  On  the  stage  we  want 
to  see  somebody  wanting  something  and  either 
getting  it  or  not  getting  it.  We  want  to  see  a 
fight,  fought  to  the  finish. 

When  Mr.  Gillette  set  out  to  put  Sherlock 
Holmes  into  a  play  he  instinctively  seized  upon 
the  shadowy  figure  of  Professor  Moriarty,  the 
astute  leader  of  a  band  of  criminals — a  figure 
only  glimpst  vaguely  in  a  far  corner  of  one  of 
the  least  known  of  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle's 
stories.  Mr.  Gillette  put  this  figure  in  the  fore- 
front of  the  play  he  was  composing,  and  set  him 
over  against  the  incomparable  detective,  thus 
providing  Sherlock  Holmes  with  a  foeman  worthy 
of  his  steel.  The  resulting  play  was  a  duel  of 
wits  between  the  wrong  embodied  in  Moriarty 
and  the  right  personified  by  Sherlock  Holmes. 
And  a  very  large  part  of  the  success  of  the  '  Lion 
and  the  Mouse'  was  due  to  the  ease  with  which 
the  audience  was  able  to  follow  the  bitter  conten- 
41 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

tion  between  the  heroine  and  the  plutocrat,  each 
of  them  knowing  his  own  mind  and  each  of  them 
feeUng  justified  in  his  own  conscience.  It  may  be 
noted,  also,  that  the  'Taming  of  the  Shrew'  is  one 
of  the  least  intellectual  of  Shakspere's  plays,  it  is 
primarily  a  farce,  with  an  abundance  of  violent 
fun;  but  it  keeps  the  stage  after  three  centuries 
because  its  story  is  vigorously  dramatic,  since  it 
sets  before  us  an  unmistakable  contention  of  op- 
posing forces,  resulting  in  the  conquest  of  a 
woman's  will  by  a  man's. 

One  piece  of  advice  to  the  novice  can  properly 
be  offered  by  a  student  of  stage  history.  Begin 
modestly.  Begin  by  imitating  the  successful 
playwrights  of  your  own  time  and  your  own  coun- 
try. Be  satisfied,  at  first,  if  you  can  succeed  in 
doing  only  what  these  predecessors  have  done — 
even  if  you  believe  you  have  it  in  you  to  do  better. 
Don't  try  to  be  precocious.  As  Margaret  Fuller 
said:  "For  precocity  some  great  price  is  always 
demanded  sooner  or  later  in  life."  The  great 
dramatists  have  never  exhibited  any  undue  pre- 
cocity; they  have  always  begun  modestly  by 
imitating.  Shakspere's  earliest  pieces  are  merely 
his  juvenile  attempts  to  write  the  kind  of  play 
that  Marlowe  and  Kyd,  Lyly  and  Greene  had 
made  popular.  Moliere's  earliest  plays  are  imita- 
tions of  the  improvised  comedies  of  the  Italian 
strollers.  In  these  early  efforts  of  Shakspere  and 
Moliere  it  is  scarcely  possible  to  perceive  even 
42 


HOW   TO   WRITE    A    PLAY 

the  promise  of  the  power  to  which  they  ultimately 
attained.  Henry  Arthur  Jones  began  by  writing 
comediettas  and  melodramas;  and  Sir  Arthur 
Pinero  made  an  equally  unambitious  beginning 
with  curtain-raisers. 

The  really  important  dramatist  is,  of  course, 
a  man  who  has  something  to  say  and  who  has 
learnt  how  to  say  it.  In  his  immaturity  he  is 
not  likely  to  have  much  to  say  of  any  great  sig- 
nificance; and  he  can,  therefore,  concentrate  his 
attention  on  learning  how  to  say  what  little  he  has 
to  utter.  An  anecdote  is  told  of  Courbet,  the 
French  painter,  which  brings  out  this  point. 
A  very  ambitious  young  fellow  came  to  him  for 
advice,  enlarging  upon  the  lofty  projects  he  had 
in  mind.  Courbet  listened  and  then  answered: 
"Go  home  and  paint  a  portrait  of  your  father." 
The  young  man  protested  at  this  humble  task, 
proclaiming  his  desire  to  paint  great  historical 
scenes.  "  Exactly,"  said  Courbet,  "  I  under- 
stand— you  want  to  become  a  historical  painter. 
That  is  why  I  tell  you  to  go  home  and  paint  a 
portrait  of  your  father." 

This  is  excellent  advice  for  beginners  in  every 
art.  Like  the  aviators,  they  must  be  content  to 
fly  along  the  level  ground  for  a  little  distance 
before  they  attempt  to  soar  aloft  into  the  blue 
empyrean. 

(1911.) 

43 


Ill 


ON    PUTTING    LITERATURE    INTO   THE 
DRAMA 

I 

WHEN  the  future  historian  of  the  American 
drama  comes  to  deal  with  the  final  years 
of  the  nineteenth  century  and  the  early  years  of 
the  twentieth,  he  will  do  well  to  record  that  the 
riper  development  in  that  period  was  retarded  by 
three  untoward  events, — the  premature  deaths 
of  Clyde  Fitch  and  William  Vaughan  Moody  and 
the  premature  birth  of  Bronson  Howard. 

Moody  was  a  poet  who  was  engaged  in  con- 
scientiously acquiring  the  art  of  the  playwright 
when  his  career  was  cut  short;  and  if  he  had  lived 
we  should  have  had  a  right  to  reckon  on  a  series  of 
serious  plays  deep  in  purpose  and  expert  in  crafts- 
manship— plays  in  which  we  should  find  a  ful- 
filment of  the  expectations  aroused  by  the 
promising  'Great  Divide'  and  'Faith  Healer.' 
Clyde  Fitch  ran  a  longer  course;  he  was  far  more 
prolific;  and  he  had  to  his  credit  half-a-dozen  or 
half-a-score  popular  successes.  But  there  was  no 
one  of  his  plays  which  sustained  its  entire  action 
44 


ON    PUTTING    LITERATURE    INTO   THE    DRAMA 

on  the  high  level  he  had  been  able  to  attain  in 
separate  scenes  when  he  was  at  his  best.  The 
third  act  of  the  'Girl  with  the  Green  Eyes'  was 
a  masterpiece  of  dramaturgic  skill  and  of  psycho- 
logic veracity,  but  it  was  followed  by  a  fourth 
act  so  inept  as  to  be  beneath  contempt.  The 
Duke  in  the  'Coronet  of  the  Duchess'  was  a 
vital  character  created  with  real  insight  into 
human  nature,  but  the  play  itself  was  false  in 
motive  and  feeble  in  construction.  Fitch  was 
honestly  ambitious;  and  he  believed  to  the  end 
that  his  best  work  was  still  before  him. 

As  both  Moody  and  Fitch  were  taken  from  us 
before  they  had  achieved  their  full  artistic  ma- 
turity, we  cannot  even  guess  what  ampler  effort 
they  might  have  put  forth  if  they  had  been  spared. 
But  we  can  see  that  there  was  a  definite  loss  to 
the  American  drama  in  the  appearance  of  Bron- 
son  Howard  a  score  of  years  too  early.  He  had 
an  unusual  endowment  for  dramatic  authorship; 
he  had  the  instinct  for  theatrical  effect;  he  had  a 
keen  sense  of  character;  he  had  an  individual 
insight  into  human  nature;  he  had  an  intuitive 
understanding  of  the  fundamental  principles  of 
playmaking;  and  he  had  a  broad  outlook  on  life. 
But  he  came  to  maturity  and  he  did  his  best  work 
in  a  period  of  rapid  transition, — in  the  years  be- 
fore the  artificial  methods  of  Sardou  and  of  Bou- 
cicault  had  been  supplanted  by  the  sterner  sim- 
plicity of  Ibsen  and  of  the  host  of  latter-day 
45 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

playwrights  who  responded  to  the  stimulus  of 
Ibsen's  masterly  technic.  The  overt  theatrical- 
ity of  the  playmakers  of  half-a-century  ago  has 
now  fallen  into  disrepute,  for  we  expect  today 
to  find  in  our  more  ambitious  dramas  a  less  ar- 
bitrarily arranged  story,  a  theme  of  more  vital 
interest,  handled  with  a  more  obvious  veracity. 
We  demand  a  more  serious  treatment  of  motive 
and  an  ampler  vision  of  life. 

These  qualities  we  do  not  find  in  Bronson 
Howard's  plays,  clever  as  they  were  and  amusing 
as  they  were.  We  cannot  help  confessing  that 
they  seem  to  us  compounded  according  to  an 
outworn  formula.  Their  merits,  undeniable  as 
they  are,  strike  us  now  as  ingeniously  theatrical 
rather  than  truly  dramatic.  These  pieces  were 
good  in  their  own  day;  but  they  are  not  good 
enough  to  withstand  the  change  in  our  standards. 
They  are  unfortunately  old-fashioned,  even  if  we 
can  still  admire  the  power  and  the  felicity  with 
which  certain  episodes  are  handled,  like  that  in 
'Shenandoah,'  where  the  soldier  father  all  un- 
wittingly conducts  the  funeral  of  his  unrecognized 
son,  a  scene  which  is  a  little  masterpiece  of  un- 
forced pathos.  And  the  reason  why  these  success- 
ful plays,  the  '  Banker's  Daughter/  '  Young  Mrs. 
Winthrop'  and  the  'Henrietta'  are  out-of-date 
today  is  that  they  were  up-to-date  yesterday; 
they  are  what  they  are  because  their  author  con- 
formed to  the  customs  of  his  youth.  But  those 
46 


ON    PUTTING    LITERATURE    INTO  THE   DRAMA 

who  knew  Bronson  Howard  personally  can  tes- 
tify that  he  had  it  in  him  to  write  plays  of  a  finer 
substance  and  of  a  solider  truth  than  he  was 
permitted  to  write  in  the  changing  epoch  when  he 
was  at  work.  He  was  subdued  to  what  he  workt 
in;  and  he  was  born  out  of  time.  If  he  had  come 
into  this  world  forty  years  later  he  would  have 
employed  the  simpler  methods  which  are  now 
acceptable;  he  would  have  dealt  more  sincerely 
with  life;  he  would  have  been  more  truly  dramatic 
without  surrendering  his  theatrical  effectiveness; 
he  would  have  utilized  more  imaginatively  his 
persistent  and  inquisitive  observation  of  conduct 
and  of  character. 

Most  successful  artists  work  rather  by  instinct 
than  by  rule;  they  achieve  their  results  more  or 
less  unconscious  of  the  laws  they  are  obeying; 
and  only  a  very  few  can  be  trusted  to  analize 
their  own  processes  and  to  explain  why  they  did 
what  they  did  in  the  way  they  did.  Bronson 
Howard  was  one  of  the  small  minority  who  could 
always  give  a  reason  for  the  faith  that  was  in  him. 
His  methods  were  intuitive,  of  course,  or  they 
would  not  have  accomplisht  the  result  at  which 
he  was  aiming;  but  they  were  also  authenticated 
by  his  constant  reflection  upon  the  principles  of 
playwriting.  After  he  had  been  guided  by  his 
intuition  he  could  explain  to  himself  the  reason 
why  he  had  done  what  he  had  done.  In  other 
words,  he  had  strengthened  his  native  instinct 
47 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

by  philosophic  inquiry  into  the  unvarying  prin- 
ciples of  playmaking. 


II 

This  is  a  lengthy  preamble  to  a  brief  anecdote. 
In  the  early  eighties  of  the  last  century  the 
Authors  Club  was  founded  in  New  York;  and 
at  its  fortnightly  gatherings  men  of  letters  came 
together  for  informal  converse, — poets  and  play- 
wrights, novelists  and  essayists,  historians  and 
philosophers.  In  their  several  degrees  they 
were  all  makers  of  books,  but  they  regarded 
literature  each  from  his  own  special  angle. 
The  unexpected  result  of  this  interchange  of 
view  was  a  broadening  of  the  outlook  of  those 
whose  vision  had  been  too  narrowly  focust  on 
their  own  field  of  endeavor. 

At  one  of  these  reunions  I  chanced  to  be  the 
third  of  a  group  of  which  the  other  two  were 
Bronson  Howard  and  Richard  Henry  Stoddard, 
a  poet  who  was  inclined  to  take  himself  rather 
too  seriously  and  who  had  little  understanding 
of  the  drama.  At  a  pause  in  our  conversation 
Stoddard  turned  to  Howard  and  put  a  question 
which  seemed  to  me  then,  as  indeed  it  does  now, 
to  be  inspired  by  a  combination  of  condescension 
and  impertinence. 

"Howard,"  he  askt,  "why  don't  you  sometimes 
put  a  little  literature  into  your  pieces?" 
48 


ON    PUTTING   LITERATURE  INTO  THE   DRAMA 

The  playwright  was  not  at  all  disturbed  by  the 
unconscious  discourtesy  of  this  query. 

"That  is  an  easy  question  to  answer,"  he  re- 
plied. "I  never  put  literature  into  my  plays 
because  I  respect  my  art  too  much." 

I  doubt  if  Stoddard  perceived  the  significance 
of  the  slight  emphasis  that  Howard  had  given  to 
the  word  put.  He  made  no  rejoinder;  and  our 
talk  drifted  to  other  topics. 

Stoddard's  inquiry  revealed  an  attitude  not 
uncommon  among  men  of  letters  who  take  little 
interest  in  the  theater  and  who  are  accustomed 
to  consider  the  drama  from  the  literary  point  of 
view.  They  think  of  a  play  as  something  in- 
tended only  to  be  read — to  be  judged  solely 
in  the  study  and  not  also  on  the  stage.  What 
Stoddard  sought  in  a  play  was  "literary  merit," 
so-called,  that  is  to  say,  style,  rhetoric,  verbal 
brilliancy;  he  gave  little  heed  to  the  more 
necessary  merits  of  invention  and  construction. 
In  his  eyes  "fine  writing"  made  a  fine  play.  It  is 
because  most  of  the  poets  of  the  English  language 
took  this  view  persistently  in  the  nineteenth 
century  that  the  English  drama  was  then  so  sterile. 
Their  attitude  was  not  unfairly  represented  in 
the  remark  of  Bayes  in  the  '  Rehearsal,'  when  he 
inquired  "What  a  Devil  is  the  plot  good  for  but 
to  bring  in  fine  things?"  And  by  good  things 
they  meant  glittering  similes,  pointed  antitheses 
and  an  unending  effulgence  of  figures  of  speech. 
49 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

They  would  have  had  Httle  sympathy  with  Jou- 
bert's  incisive  declaration  that  "what  is  wanted 
is  not  merely  the  poetry  of  images,  but  the  poetry 
of  ideas."  They  expected  the  dramatist  to  con- 
struct his  decoration,  feeling  dissatisfied  when 
he  only  decorated  his  construction. 

The  quarrel  is  ancient,  if  it  is  not  honorable; 
and  the  men  of  letters  could  have  pointed  with 
pride  to  Seneca  and  to  the  Italians  of  the  Renas- 
cence and  to  the  French  who  followed  in  the  foot- 
steps of  the  Italians.  But  they  would  have  found 
no  support  in  the  practice  or  in  the  precepts  of 
the  great  Greek  dramatists  or  of  the  great  drama- 
tists of  the  modern  languages.  The  great  drama- 
tists know  better  than  anyone  else  that  plays 
do  not  live  by  style  alone,  but  by  substance,  by 
invention  and  by  construction,  by  imagination 
and  by  veracity.  A  good  play  must  be  well 
written,  no  doubt,  but  before  it  is  written  it  must 
be  well  conceived  and  well  developt;  it  must 
have  a  theme;  it  must  have  a  story  which  reveals 
itself  in  a  sequence  of  situations;  and  this  plot 
must  be  peopled  with  human  beings  who  look  like 
human  beings,  who  talk  like  human  beings,  and 
who  act  like  human  beings. 

While  the  words  by  means  of  which  these  char- 
acters disclose  themselves  and  carry  on  the  action 
are  important,  they  are  far  less  important  than 
the  action  itself.  Moreover,  true  "  literary  merit " 
does  not  reside  in  the  smoothness  of  the  external 
50 


ON    PUTTING    LITERATURE    INTO   THE    DRAMA 

rhetoric  but  in  the  vigorous  harmony  of  the  in- 
ternal elements  which  enable  the  play  to  stand 
four-square  to  all  the  winds  that  blow.  It  is  by 
the  force  of  these  internal  elements  that  a  drama 
maintains  itself  in  the  theater,  even  if  it  is  more 
or  less  by  its  external  charm  of  style  that  it  pleases 
us  also  in  the  library.  In  the  playhouse  the  play 
appeals  to  the  playgoers,  an  incongruous  mass 
made  up  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men;  yet 
the  verdict  of  this  mass  is  always  sincere  and  it 
has  always  had  the  high  respect  of  the  great 
dramatists,  who  have  indeed  paid  little  or  no 
regard  to  any  other  verdict.  Probably  most  of 
the  great  dramatists  would  unhesitatingly  sub- 
scribe to  the  assertion  of  one  of  the  most  adroit 
playwrights  of  our  own  time,  Mr.  William  Gil- 
lette, when  he  declared  that  dramatic  authors  find 
the  public  "honest  and  straightforward  with  us 
always,  ever  ready  to  be  moved  by  what  is  true 
and  lifelike  and  human,  provided  it  be  made  in- 
teresting; ever  ready  to  reject  the  false  and  arti- 
ficial, even  tho  it  be  festooned  with  literary  gems." 
"Festooned  with  literary  gems  \"  Could  there 
be  an  apter  description  of  the  "literature"  that 
is  put  into  a  play,  in  the  vain  hope  of  disguising 
its  falsity  and  its  artificiality  and  of  concealing  its 
lack  of  truth  and  humanity?  A  dramatist  who 
understands  his  art  and  respects  it,  never  tries 
to  put  literature  into  his  plays;  he  confines  his 
effort  to  putting  life  into  them,  well  aware  that 
51 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

if  he  achieves  sincerity  and  veracity,  he  will  also 
attain  literature  without  having  strained  for  it. 


Ill 

The  overmastering  desire  to  be  "literary"  on 
all  occasions  and  at  all  costs  has  wrecked  the  hopes 
of  many  an  ambitious  man  of  letters  when  he 
has  sought  success  on  the  stage.  Stevenson,  for 
example,  believed  that  the  artificiality  of  his 
'  Deacon  Brodie,'  its  falsity  to  life,  could  be  atoned 
for  by  its  sheer  verbal  beauty.  He  was  able  to 
give  his  story  this  external  merit;  but  he  neg- 
lected to  give  it  the  necessary  internal  merit  of 
sincerity.  He  amused  himself  by  playing  with 
his  subject,  instead  of  wrestling  with  it  after 
fasting  and  prayer.  He  tried  to  palm  off  on  the 
public  a  verbal  veneer  as  a  substitute  for  the 
solid  mahogany  which  the  public  expected. 
Clever  as  he  was,  he  failed  to  see  that  a  living 
drama  depends  upon  a  stark  simplicity  of  struc- 
ture, which  may  admit  of  decoration  but  which 
does  not  demand  this,  because  it  has  ever  the 
undeniable  beauty  of  perfect  design,  a  beauty 
equally  undeniable  even  when  it  is  unadorned. 

Voltaire  was  a  man  of  letters,  beyond  all  ques- 
tion, but  he  was  also  a  man  with  a  wide  and  varied 
experience  in  the  theater;  and  it  was  this  experi- 
ence which  once  led  him  to  set  forth  the  essential 
qualities  of  a  play:  "Compact  a  lofty  and  in- 
52 


ON    PUTTING    LITERATURE    INTO   THE    DRAMA 

teresting  event  in  the  space  of  two  or  three  hours; 
bring  forward  the  several  characters  only  when 
each  ought  to  appear;  never  leave  the  stage 
empty;  develop  a  plot  as  probable  as  it  is  attrac- 
tive; say  nothing  unnecessary;  instruct  the  mind 
and  move  the  heart;  be  eloquent  always  and  with 
the  eloquence  proper  to  every  character  repre- 
sented; use  a  language  as  pure  as  the  most  careful 
prose  without  permitting  the  fetters  of  rime  to 
appear  to  interfere  with  the  thought, — these  are 
the  conditions  now  imposed  on  tragedy."  And  if 
we  strike  out  the  injunction  never  to  leave  the 
stage  empty  and  the  advice  about  rime, — moni- 
tions of  value  only  in  French  tragedy — we  have 
here  a  characteristically  penetrating  analysis. 

Man  of  letters  as  Voltaire  was  above  all  else, 
he  did  not  ask  the  intending  playwright  to  spend 
any  of  his  energy  on  the  effort  to  be  "literary." 
Even  when  he  prescribed  the  duty  of  being 
"eloquent  always"  he  qualified  this  and  explained 
his  real  meaning  by  adding  "with  the  eloquence 
proper  to  every  character  represented."  Plainly 
enough  Voltaire  was  out  of  sympathy  with  the 
many  poets  of  his  own  time  who  were  wont  to 
rely  on  "festoons  of  literary  gems"  and  whose  ver- 
bal glitter  was  often  only  pinchbeck  and  paste. 
With  the  same  insight  into  the  true  conditions 
of  dramatic  composition,  Voltaire,  on  another  oc- 
casion, declared  that  tragedy  welcomes  metaphor 
and  abhors  simile.  "Why?  Because  a  meta- 
53 


THE    PRINCIPLES  OF    PLAYMAKING 

phor,  when  it  is  natural,  belongs  to  passion; 
but  a  simile  belongs  only  to  the  intelligence." 

When  we  consider  the  plays  of  Shakspere  in 
the  order  in  which  he  wrote  them,  it  is  interesting 
to  see  how  he  indulged  freely  in  simile  in  the  days 
of  his  apprenticeship  to  the  art  of  playmaking; 
and  how  as  he  gained  a  firmer  grasp  on  the 
principles  of  the  art,  he  banisht  simile  and  relied 
almost  altogether  upon  metaphor.  In  'Love's 
Labor's  Lost,'  for  example,  which  is  probably  his 
earliest  attempt  at  comedy,  we  can  observe  him 
joyfully  displaying  his  own  verbal  dexterity, 
delighting  in  conceits  and  in  fanciful  comparisons, 
juggling  with  words  for  their  own  sake.  Some- 
thing of  this  he  retained  even  when  he  wrote  his 
youthful  tragedy  'Romeo  and  Juliet,'  where  we 
can  catch  him  in  the  act,  so  to  speak,  of  "putting 
literature  into  a  play."  But  there  is  nothing  of 
this  in  the  'Macbeth'  of  his  maturity;  that 
achieves  literature  inevitably,  by  its  simple  ver- 
acity, and  seemingly  without  overt  exertion  on 
his  part.  In  'Love's  Labor's  Lost'  we  can  de- 
tect his  own  consciousness  of  his  cleverness, 
whereas  in  'Macbeth'  he  has  ceased  to  be  clever 
and  is  content  to  be  true. 

In  nothing  is  Shakspere's  ultimate  mastery  of 
his  craft  more  clearly  disclosed  than  in  the  un- 
erring certainty  with  which  he  employed  now 
prose  and  then  blank  verse  as  the  varying  epi- 
sodes of  his  story  seemed  to  demand  the  one  or 
the  other.  In  'Julius  Qesar,'  for  instance,  Brutus 
54 


ON    PUTTING   LITERATURE    INTO  THE   DRAMA 

and  Cassius  and  Mark  Antony,  the  loftier  figures 
of  the  tragedy,  speak  in  blank  verse;  the  less 
important  characters  make  use  of  a  rhythmic 
prose,  effectively  cadenced  but  lacking  the  rigor- 
ous restrictions  of  meter;  the  plebeians  and  the 
mob  express  their  emotions  and  their  opinions  in 
bare  prose. 

Most  of  the  modern  poets  of  our  language, 
when  they  have  essayed  a  five-act  tragedy,  have 
failed  to  profit  by  Shakspere's  example.  They 
have  not  dared  to  drop  into  prose,  even  in  dealing 
with  the  unpoetic  commonplaces  of  everyday 
existence.  They  never  cease  to  walk  on  stilts, 
because  they  are  forever  trying  to  put  literature 
into  their  plays.  "The  ordinary  English  poetical 
play  varies  between  rather  slack  and  formless 
meter,  and  ornate,  involved  and  ultra-poetical 
diction,"  so  Professor  Gilbert  Murray  asserts. 
"The  first  enables  the  poet  to  slide  into  prose 
when  asking  for  his  boots;  the  second,  almost  un- 
assisted, has  to  keep  up  the  poetic  quality  of  the 
atmosphere.  It  does  so,  of  course,  at  the  expense 
of  directness,  and  often  with  the  ruinous  result 
that  where  you  have  Drama  3^ou  have  killed 
Poetry,  and  where  you  have  Poetry  you  have 
killed  Drama." 

IV 

Professor  Murray  has  here  placed  his  finger 
on  the  prevailing  defect  of  the  English  poetical 
play  of  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

55 


THE   PRINCIPLES   OF   PLAYMAKING 

It  insisted  on  being  "poetical"  at  all  times  and  at 
any  cost.  It  was  the  result  of  a  mistaken  belief 
that  a  play  could  be  made  poetical  by  applying  a 
varnish  of  "poetry."  And  a  belief  equally  mis- 
taken led  the  writers  of  English  comedy  of  the 
same  period  to  besprinkle  their  dialog  with 
hand-made  witticisms,  with  alleged  epigrams, 
distributed  lavishly  to  all  the  characters,  even  to 
the  dullest  and  the  least  capable  of  making  a 
joke.  In  the  insubstantial  comic  pieces  of  H.  J. 
Byron,  anybody  would  say  anything  however 
inappropriate,  to  anybody  else,  if  this  could  be 
made  a  cue  for  a  cut-and-dried  repartee.  The 
spectators  of  these  highly  unreal  pieces  could  not 
doubt  that  Byron  kept  a  notebook  in  which  he 
jotted  down  every  joke,  every  quip  and  every 
pun  that  came  to  him;  and  they  could  almost 
see  him  taking  out  one  or  another  of  these  merry 
jests  to  pin  it  into  his  dialog  as  best  he  could. 

"The  sure  sign  of  a  general  decline  of  an  art 
is  the  frequent  occurence,  not  of  deformity,  but 
of  misplaced  beauty,"  said  Macaulay  with  his 
customary  common  sense.  "In  general,  trag- 
edy is  corrupted  by  eloquence  and  comedy  by 
wit."  Perhaps  it  is  rather  grandiloquence  than 
actual  eloquence  which  marks  the  decline  of 
tragedy;  but  that  comedy  is  debased  by  a  per- 
petual questing  of  epigram,  falsely  so-called,  must 
be  admitted  at  once.  The  disappearance  of  the 
factitious  and  laborious  "wit"  from  our  more 
56 


ON    PUTTING    LITERATURE    INTO  THE    DRAMA 

recent  plays  is  evidence  that  modern  comedy  is 
recovering  its  health. 

Oscar  Wilde  was  the  latest  British  comic  drama- 
tist to  indulge  in  incessant  fireworks.  But  it  is 
an  error  to  suppose  that  his  success  on  the  stage 
was  due  to  his  scintillations  and  his  corruscations. 
His  best  comedies  are  solidly  built,  with  an  in- 
genious story  carefully  elaborated  into  a  com- 
pelling plot.  The  pleasure  which  we  get  from 
'Lady  Windemere's  Fan'  is  only  in  small  part  de- 
rived from  its  varnish  of  witticisms,  often  highly 
arbitrary  in  themselves  and  sometimes  very 
arbitrarily  distributed.  Indeed,  there  are  already 
signs  that  the  persistent  and  insistent  crackle  of 
the  dialog  is  beginning  to  be  annoying  to  latter- 
day  audiences.  We  are  losing  our  liking  for  an 
external  dazzle  which  distracts  our  attention  from 
the  internal  action  artfully  arranged  to  arouse 
and  to  retain  out  interest. 

Even  if  'Lady  Windemere's  Fan'  is  not  quite 
sincere  in  its  portrayal  of  character  and  not  quite 
veracious  in  its  dealing  with  life,  it  has  an  in- 
geniously articulated  plot  which  would  retain 
its  potency  even  if  the  play  should  be  translated 
into  German  and  thence  into  Spanish  and  finally 
back  into  English, — an  operation  which  would 
certainly  brush  off  all  the  spangles  that  now  glis- 
ten in  the  dialog.  Yet  we  may  be  assured  that 
these  forced  and  fortuitous  quips  and  quirks 
were  not  continuously  injected  because  the 
57 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

author  believed  it  to  be  his  duty  to  put  literature 
into  his  play,  but  rather  because  he  recognized  that 
he  had  to  maintain  his  own  reputation  as  a  wit, 
as  a  manufacturer  of  cleverness,  as  a  retailer  of 
"good  things."  And  it  may  be  admitted  that  in 
bestowing  this  deliberate  brilliance  on  his  dialog, 
Wilde  was  dutifully  following  in  the  footsteps  of 
the  two  masters  of  the  English  comedy  of  manners, 
Congreve  and  Sheridan. 

In  the  third  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century 
the  French  drama  also  suffered  from  an  epidemic 
of  epigram.  The  foremost  French  comedy  of  that 
time,  the  'Gendre  de  M.  Poirier'  of  Augier  and 
Sandeau,  was  more  or  less  infected  by  this  mal- 
ady; and  the  chief  rival  of  the  'Gendre  de  M. 
Poirier,'  the  'Demi-Monde'  of  the  younger 
Dumas,  has  been  quarantined  by  later  French 
critics  because  of  its  feverish  eruption  of  witti- 
cisms. It  is  only  fair  to  record  that  Dumas  re- 
covered, and  that  in  his  later  'Francillon'  there 
is  scarcely  a  single  example  of  calculated  repartee. 
The  dialog  of  'Francillon'  seems  spontaneous 
even  when  it  is  at  its  cleverest,  whereas  that  of 
the  'Demi-Monde'  strikes  us  today  as  mannered 
and  metallic.  The  French  playwrights  of  the 
twentieth  century  may  even  be  accused  of  having 
reacted  a  little  too  violently  from  the  practices 
of  their  immediate  predecessors,  since  they 
appear  almost  to  avoid  wit. 

So  long  as  the  dramatist,  French,  British  or 
58 


ON    PUTTING   LITERATURE   INTO  THE   DRAMA 

American,  was  adjusting  his  plays  to  the  apron- 
stage  which  brought  the  actors  almost  into  per- 
sonal contact  with  the  audience  and  which 
invited  the  characters  to  be  exuberantly  gran- 
diloquent in  tragedy  or  confidentially  witty 
in  comedy,  he  was  subject  to  a  constant  tempta- 
tion to  "  put  literature  into  the  drama."  But  this 
temptation  has  diminisht,  if  it  has  not  disap- 
peared, now  that  our  playwrights  are  all  working 
for  the  picture-frame  stage  which  keeps  the 
actors  far  distant  from  the  spectators  and  which 
therefore  places  a  premium  on  simple  and  direct 
utterance. 

(1918.) 


59 


IV 
THREE  THEORISTS  OF  THE   THEATER 

I 

CRITICS  of  the  drama  are  like  the  poor,  in 
that  they  are  always  with  us.  It  matters 
little  whether  the  theater  is  flourishing  or  expir- 
ing; we  are  never  at  a  loss  for  self-appointed 
judges,  ready  to  pass  condemnation  on  the  prin- 
ciples and  on  the  practices  of  the  playwrights. 
In  Alexandria  when  dramatic  literature  was  non- 
existent, as  the  glory  that  was  Greece  was  slowly 
sinking  out  of  sight,  and  in  Italy  again  when 
there  was  a  splendid  renascence  of  all  the  arts 
save  the  drama  alone,  there  existed  a  supera- 
bundant and  superfluous  host  of  critics,  promul- 
gating the  rigid  code  which  they  had  deduced 
from  their  own  inner  consciousness. 

Indeed,  it  seems  to  be  especially  in  times  of 
dramatic  penury  that  the  theorists  of  the  theater 
increase  and  multiply  spontaneously.  And  this 
is  most  unfortunate,  since  it  is  quite  as  bad  for  a 
critic  as  it  is  for  a  poet  to  let  himself  lose  sight  of 
the  actual  playhouse,  with  its  associated  players 
and  its  accustomed  playgoers.  The  fundamental 
60 


THREE   THEORISTS   OF   THE   THEATER 

principles  of  any  art  can  be  singled  out  and  made 
plain  only  by  observation  of  the  practice  of  the 
artists  who  have  excelled  in  that  art.  Criticism 
is  but  the  hand-maid  of  creation;  and  the  task 
of  the  commentator  is  impossible  when  he  lacks 
material  for  comment.  Then  is  he  reduced  to  the 
needless  and  profitless  exercise  of  inventing  Rules 
for  an  art  which  he  has  not  been  able  to  observe 
in  the  actual  process.  Whenever  the  dramatic 
critic  has  toiled  vainly  because  there  was  no  liv- 
ing drama  in  his  own  tongue  and  in  his  own  time 
to  inspire  him  and  to  guide  him,  he  has  been  led 
unfailingly  to  deal  with  the  drama  as  tho  it  were 
solely  a  department  of  literature,  to  be  weighed 
on  literary  scales  only  and  to  be  measured  merely 
by  literary  standards. 

Even  when  the  theater  is  active  and  produc- 
tive, it  is  difficult  enough  for  the  critic  to  re- 
member always  that  the  drama  does  not  lie  wholly 
within  the  limits  of  literature.  No  doubt,  it  is 
mainly  by  its  literary  qualities  that  a  drama  sur- 
vives, by  its  invention,  by  its  structure,  by  its 
style,  by  its  veracity  of  character,  by  its  ethical 
integrity;  but  it  is  by  its  non-literary  qualities 
that  it  has  been  able  at  first  to  succeed  on  the 
stage,  by  its  theatrical  effectiveness,  its  histri- 
onic opportunities,  its  picturesqueness  when  per- 
formed. 

In  the  long,  interesting  and  instructive  history 
of  dramatic  criticism — a  history  which  has  not 
6i 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

yet  tempted  to  its  telling  any  scholar  equipt  with 
a  wide  acquaintance  with  literature  and  a  deep 
understanding  of  the  theater — in  this  long  history 
two  names  stand  out  preeminent,  the  names  of 
Aristotle  and  of  Lessing.  The  names  of  the 
Alexandrian  writers  are  forgotten;  and  the  names 
of  the  critics  of  the  Italian  Renascence  are  familiar 
only  to  devoted  specialists.  It  may  be  ad- 
mitted that  the  names  of  Sidney  and  of  Boileau 
are  still  cherisht;  but  the  code  they  declared  has 
long  been  discredited  and  disestablisht.  The 
names  of  Gottsched  and  of  La  Harpe  carry  no 
weight  in  the  twentieth  century,  even  to  those 
who  chance  to  remember  that  once  they  were 
loudly  acclaimed  as  arbiters  of  taste.  Many  a 
name  that  for  a  season  blazed  brilliantly  in  the 
sky  is  as  disregarded  today  as  the  stick  of  a  burnt- 
out  rocket.  Who  pays  any  attention  today  to 
Schlegel,  sunk  beneath  the  wave  of  oblivion  be- 
cause of  the  rancor  of  his  political  prejudices  and 
because  of  the  frequent  falsity  of  his  general  ideas  ? 
Who  knows  now,  or  cares  to  know,  that  a  cen- 
tury ago  Nepomucene  Lemercier  catalogued  the 
twenty-five  rules  which  tragedy  must  obey  and  the 
twenty-two  rules  to  which  comedy  must  conform  ? 
Critics  of  the  drama  come  and  go;  they  rise  and 
fall;  they  have  their  little  fame,  and  sometimes 
they  may  survive  to  see  it  fade  away.  Reputa- 
tion is  as  fleeting  in  criticism  as  it  is  in  creation; 
and  the  promulgators  of  dramatic  doctrine  are 
62 


THREE   THEORISTS   OF  THE   THEATER 

no  more  likely  to  retain  popular  esteem  than  the 
poets  and  the  playwrights  they  have  sought  to 
guide  and  to  govern.  The  winds  of  doctrine 
shift  with  the  changing  years,  and  often  with 
startling  suddenness.  But  however  bitterly  the 
veering  breezes  may  blow,  the  names  of  Aristotle 
and  of  Lessing  stand  where  they  have  stood  these 
many  years. 

The  pleasure  that  we  find  in  the  selection  of 
the  Hundred  Best  Books  or  of  the  Hundred  Finest 
Pictures  is  futile;  but  there  is  always  profit  in 
striving  to  recognize  with  certainty  the  Best 
Poets  and  the  Best  Painters,  be  they  a  dozen  or 
a  score  or  a  hundred.  And  when  we  seek  to  get 
a  firm  grasp  upon  the  abiding  principles  of  any 
art,  it  is  no  less  profitable  for  us  to  ascertain  who 
are  the  Best  Critics  of  that  art.  In  the  analysis 
and  interpretation  of  the  art  of  the  drama  the 
supreme  chiefs  are  Aristotle  and  Lessing,  these 
two  and  no  others.  They  are  theorists,  it  is  true, 
as  were  the  Alexandrians  and  the  Italians,  whose 
vogue  was  evanescent;  but  their  theories  were 
solidly  rooted  in  accurate  observation  of  the 
acted  drama.  The  laws  they  declared  are  as 
valid  today  as  ever;  their  judgments  have  been 
confirmed  in  the  supreme  court  over  which  Time 
presides;  and  even  their  obiter  dicta  are  still  sig- 
nificant. 

When  we  seek  to  spy  out  the  reasons  why  the 
solid  authority  of  Aristotle  and  Lessing  endures 
63 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

thru  the  ages,  we  must  begin  by  crediting  both  of 
them  with  the  fourfold  quahfications  without 
which  all  efforts  at  criticism  are  barren.  They 
had  insight  and  equipment,  sympathy  and  dis- 
interestedness. They  did  not  possess  all  of  these 
qualifications  in  an  equal  degree;  but  all  four  of 
these  they  did  possess  not  only  sufficiently  but 
abundantly.  They  had  the  innate  gift  of  analysis; 
they  had  material  for  comparison;  they  had  a 
natural  relish  for  the  best;  and  they  sought  al- 
ways to  see  the  thing  as  it  is,  without  bias,  taking 
their  personal  prejudices  out  of  the  way.  What- 
ever deduction  may  be  indicated  from  this  asser- 
tion must  be  directed  to  two  points  only;  Aristotle 
may  be  held  to  be  a  little  limited  in  his  equip- 
ment by  the  fact  that  he  had  no  other  dramatic 
literature  to  compare  with  that  of  his  country- 
men; and  Lessing  may  be  thought  to  be  more 
than  a  little  limited  in  his  disinterestedness  by  his 
desire  to  discredit  and  to  destroy  the  influence  of 
the  French  classicists. 

Then  the  ultimate  validity  of  their  criticism  is 
due  partly  to  the  fact  that  their  vision  was  not 
circumscribed  by  the  walls  of  the  playhouse; 
they  toiled  in  other  fields  and  they  knew  many 
things  wholly  unrelated  to  the  theater.  Their 
reputations  do  not  rest  solely,  or  even  chiefly,  on 
their  work  as  expounders  of  dramaturgic  doctrine. 
One  might  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  altho  Aristotle 
and  Lessing  are  the  supreme  dramatic  critics, 
64 


THREE  THEORISTS  OF  THE  THEATER 

their  fame  would  scarcely  be  less  if  they  had  never 
written  a  word  about  the  theater.  No  man  can 
know  his  own  subject  thoroly  if  his  own  subject 
is  all  that  he  knows;  he  needs  to  wander  afield 
and  to  be  interested  in  many  other  things  if  he  is 
to  attain  breadth  of  survey  even  in  his  own 
specialty.  Aristotle,  and  Lessing  also,  had  that 
cognate  culture,  without  which,  as  Mr.  Brownell 
has  insisted,  "specific  erudition  produces  a  rather 
lean  result." 

But  altho  their  vision  was  not  contracted  within 
the  limits  of  the  theater,  it  is  always  in  the  theater 
itself  that  they  conceive  themselves  to  be  sitting 
when  they  come  to  the  criticism  of  a  play.  They 
are  never  mere  readers  of  literature  but  always 
spectators  of  the  acted  drama.  They  are  ever 
thinking  in  terms  of  the  theater  itself.  "A  play 
has  this  peculiarity  and  distinction,"  said  Brune- 
tiere,  "that  being  written  to  be  acted,  it  is  not 
complete  in  itself  and  it  cannot  be  detacht  from 
the  material  conditions  of  scenic  representation 
and  from  the  nature  of  the  public  for  which  it  is 
destined."  Aristotle  and  Lessing  kept  in  mind 
the  nature  of  the  public  to  which  the  play- 
wrights they  were  discussing  had  appealed;  and 
they  never  overlookt  the  material  conditions  of 
scenic  representation.  By  a  constant  effort  of 
imaginative  sympathy  they  were  able  to  transport 
themselves  in  fancy  from  the  desk  where  they 
sat  alone  to  a  seat  in  front  of  the  actors  and  by 
65 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

the  side  of  a  crowd  of  other  spectators.  It  is  by 
their  understanding  of  the  Siamese-twinship  of 
the  drama  and  the  theater  that  their  theories  are 
vahdated. 

The  principles  they  establisht  for  dramatic 
literature  were  derived  from  the  practice  of  suc- 
cessful playwrights.  These  principles  had  noth- 
ing etherial  or  volatile;  they  were  rooted  in  com- 
mon sense.  What  Professor  Giddings  says  about 
Aristotle  as  an  interpreter  of  the  science  of  govern- 
ment is  equally  true  about  Aristotle  as  an  ex- 
pounder of  the  art  of  poetry:  "Aristotle  was  in- 
deed one  of  the  greatest  of  theorists;  but  he  is 
likewise  one  of  the  shrewdest  judges  of  what  we 
call  practical  politics";  and  "his  theories  grew 
out  of  his  observations,  and  they  formulate  vital 
principles  from  concrete  social  conditions."  And 
Lessing  was  scarcely  less  shrewd  than  Aristotle 
as  a  judge  of  practical  playmaking,  having  even 
the  advantage  of  being  himself  a  successful  play- 
wright, practising  what  he  preacht. 

In  other  words,  the  dramatic  criticism  of  Aris- 
totle and  Lessing  is  expert  criticism;  and  it  is 
highly  technical.  As  the  technical  principles  of 
every  art  endure  thru  the  ages  unchanged,  how- 
ever much  its  devices  may  be  modified  by  altered 
conditions,  the  precepts  proposed  by  Aristotle  and 
by  Lessing  state  permanent  and  essential  prin- 
ciples of  dramaturgy.  Indeed,  it  is  the  insistence 
of  Aristotle  upon  sheer  technic  which  has  misled 

66 


THREE   THEORISTS  OF  THE  THEATER 

SO  many  of  his  commentators,  who  have  accepted 
him  as  an  inspired  lawgiver,  coming  down  from 
the  mountain  with  the  tables  of  stone  in  his  hand, 
instead  of  seeing  that  he  is  only  presenting  shrewd 
deductions  from  his  own  observations  in  the 
theater  when  the  masterpieces  of  the  Greek  drama 
were  performed  before  his  gaze. 


In  its  size,  in  its  material  conditions,  in  its  spec- 
tators, the  Globe  theater  in  London  was  very 
unlike  the  theater  of  Dionysus  in  Athens;  the 
picture-frame  stage  of  our  latter-day  playhouse 
is  very  unlike  the  platform-stage  of  the  Eliza- 
bethans; but  none  the  less  are  the  essential  prin- 
ciples which  guided  Shakspere  in  his  greatest 
tragedies,  when  his  ambition  was  aroused  and 
when  he  was  exerting  all  his  powers,  the  same  as 
those  which  governed  Sophocles  and  which 
Aristotle  declared, — as  they  are  the  same  which 
Moliere  followed  in  his  turn  and  which  Ibsen  was 
to  obey  in  our  own  time.  These  essential  prin- 
ciples are  independent  of  the  changes  in  the  size 
and  material  conditions  of  the  various  theaters 
that  have  succeeded  one  another  in  the  past 
twenty-five  centuries.  It  is  because  Aristotle  was 
able  to  lay  hold  of  the  most  important  of  these 
principles  more  than  two  thousand  years  ago 
that  he  remains  constantly  up-to-date,  with  no 
67 


THE    PRINCIPLES    OF    PLAYMAKING 

danger  of  ever  falling  out-of-date.  This  is  the 
reason  why  his  name  is  now  constantly  invoked 
by  the  more  important  reviewers  of  the  con- 
temporary drama,  while  the  names  of  Johnson  and 
Pope,  of  Boileau  and  Horace  are  allowed  to  lan- 
guish in  innocuous  desuetude. 

This  modernness  of  Aristotle's  dramatic  theories 
is  due  mainly  to  his  modesty  in  not  assuming  the 
attitude  of  the  inspired  lawgiver.  He  was  never 
arrogant,  as  Schlegel  was.  He  contented  himself 
with  pointing  out  the  principles  which  seemed  to 
him  to  underly  the  practices  of  the  dramatic  poets 
of  accredited  supremacy.  He  suggested  that  if 
Sophocles  apparently  obeys  certain  rules,  why, 
then  it  might  be  well  if  all  those  who  may  be  am- 
bitious to  compose  plays  should  also  obey  these 
rules.  He  conceived  himself  as  giving  counsel, 
and  as  advising  'prentice  playwrights  how  best 
they  could  model  themselves  on  the  masters. 
His  conclusions  were  tentative,  as  becomes  a  man 
of  science,  conscious  that  the  results  of  any  in- 
quiry are  never  final. 

It  need  not  surprize  us  that  the  uneasy  Italian 
commentators  of  Aristotle  did  not  see  him  in 
this  hght,  that  they  ascribed  to  him  their  own  dic- 
tatorial attitude.  They  knew  Seneca  better 
than  they  knew  Sophocles;  and  they  really  relisht 
the  declamatory  rhetoric  of  the  Hispano- Roman 
more  than  the  austere  poetry  and  the  masterly 
plotting  of  the  great  Greek.  They  knew  Horace 
68 


THREE   THEORISTS   OF   THE   THEATER 

better  than  they  knew  Aristotle — Horace,  who  in 
all  his  life  may  never  have  seen  a  good  play  well 
acted,  and  whose  precepts  are  detacht  from  prac- 
tize, being  borrowed  second-hand  from  the 
Alexandrian  criticasters  of  the  Hellenistic  de- 
cadence. Perhaps  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
the  supersubtle  Italians  read  Aristotle  thru  the 
spectacles  of  Horace;  and  because  Horace  spoke 
as  one  having  authority,  they  believed  that 
Aristotle  also  was  a  promulgator  of  implacable 
decrees.  When  they  failed  to  find  in  his  text 
a  code  as  complete  or  as  rigid  as  they  desired,  in 
their  intolerance  they  did  not  hesitate  to  draft 
new  laws  in  the  name  of  Aristotle.  They  sancti- 
fied the  elaborate  classicist  doctrine  of  the  drama 
by  sheltering  it  under  his  revered  authority.  It 
is  no  wonder  that  when  the  romanticist  revolt 
came,  as  it  had  to  come,  some  of  its  leaders  should 
have  sneered  at  Aristotle,  holding  him  responsible 
for  the  perverted  theories  put  forth  by  his  insati- 
able commentators.  Nor  is  there  any  wonder 
that  Aristotle  should  have  come  into  his  own 
again,  after  the  "magniloquent  silhouettes  of 
romanticist  drama," — as  Mr.  Huneker  has  called 
them — shrivelled  from  the  stage. 

Aristotle's  discussion  of  play  making,  is  inci- 
dental to  his  larger  discussion  of  poetry.  It  has 
come  down  to  us  incomplete  and  fragmentary. 
We  cannot  be  assured  that  we  have  his  own  text. 
We  are  in  doubt  whether  what  we  now  possess  is 
69 


THE   PRINCIPLES  OF   PLAYMAKING 

only  a  portion  of  a  careful  treatise  made  ready 
for  publication  by  Aristotle,  or  whether  it  is 
only  a  collection  of  memorandums  set  down  loosely 
to  aid  him  in  lecturing.  There  are  even  com- 
mentators who  hold  that  our  manuscripts  are  due 
not  to  Aristotle  himself  but  to  some  ardent  dis- 
ciple who  took  notes  to  preserve  as  best  he  could 
the  utterances  of  the  master.  The  late  Jules 
Lemaitre  was  of  the  second  of  these  opinions, 
finding  confirmation  for  it  in  the  famous  sentence 
about  the  tragic  "purgation"  of  passion.  "No 
doubt  Aristotle  jotted  this  down  as  a  simple 
memorandum, — for  it  is  incomplete  and  badly 
constructed,  containing  a  figure  of  speech  both  bi- 
zarre and  ill-prepared;  and  it  is  very  like  those 
notes,  intelligible  only  to  ourselves  which  we  set 
down  in  a  notebook  with  telegraphic  or  hiero- 
glyphic brevity." 

In  the  same  criticism, — an  account  of  Cor- 
neille's  vain  efforts  to  reconcile  his  own  practice 
with  the  precepts  of  Aristotle, — Lemaitre  dwelt 
on  the  patent  absurdity  of  supposing  that  all 
the  precepts  of  Aristotle  are  final  for  all  time  and 
in  all  countries,  since  the  Greek  philosopher  was 
making  remarks  only  about  the  tragedies  of  his 
own  day, — "that  is  to  say,  about  operas  of  a 
kind,  which  were  acted  and  sung  two  or  three 
times  a  year  at  great  festivals,"  and  of  which 
Aristotle  "  might  have  seen  or  read  a  hundred  at 
most,  for  they  were  not  very  numerous,"  probably 
70 


THREE  THEORISTS  OF  THE  THEATER 

outlining  "  his  theories  from  his  study  of  a  score  of 
prize-winning  plays." 

It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  a  few  of  Aris- 
totle's remarks  are  applicable  only  to  Greek 
tragedies, — "operas  of  a  kind"; — what  is  wonder- 
ful is  that  so  many  of  them  are  acceptable  when 
applied  to  modern  plays  wholly  unlike  Greek  trag- 
edies, and  that  a  critic  as  acute  as  Emile  Faguet 
was  not  guilty  of  wilful  paradox  when  he  asserted 
that  the  more  he  studied  the  'Poetics'  the  more 
assured  he  felt  that  Aristotle  "has  given  us  rather 
the  theory  of  French  tragedy  than  that  of  Greek 
tragedy." 

What  are  the  principles  of  playmaking  declared 
by  Aristotle  and  as  dominant  today  as  they  were 
in  his  own  time?  First  of  all,  there  is  a  clear 
recognition  of  the  essential  relation  of  the  drama 
to  the  theater,  with  its  declamation,  its  gestures, 
its  spectacle,  and  above  all,  with  its  spectators 
whom  the  playwright  has  to  interest,  to  arouse, 
and  to  hold. 

Secondly,  there  is  an  equally  clear  recognition 
of  the  supreme  importance  of  the  action,  the 
story,  the  plot; — "most  important  of  all  is  the 
structure  of  the  incidents,  for  a  play  is  an  imita- 
tion, not  of  men,  but  of  an  action  and  of  life, — 
of  happiness  and  misery;  and  happiness  and 
misery  consist  in  action,  the  end  of  human  life 
being  a  mode  of  action,  not  a  quality.  .  .  . 
Dramatic  action,  therefore,  is  not  with  a  view  to 
71 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

the  representation  of  character;  character  comes 
in  as  subsidiary  to  the  action.  Hence  the  inci- 
dents and  the  plot  are  the  end  of  a  tragedy;  and 
the  end  is  the  chief  thing  of  all.  Again,  without 
action  there  cannot  be  a  tragedy;  there  may 
be  without  character.  .  .  .  The  poet  should  be  a 
maker  of  plots  rather  than  of  verses;  since  he  is 
a  poet  because  he  imitates,  and  what  he  imitates 
are  actions." 

This  is  a  hard  saying  for  the  defenders  of  the 
closet-drama,  for  it  implies  that  merely  as  a  play 
the  'Two  Orphans'  is  superior  to  the  '  Blot  in  the 
'Scutcheon,'  yet  this  would  be  denied  by  no  com- 
petent dramatic  critic.  Jules  Lemaitre  called 
attention  to  the  accuracy  of  Aristotle's  clear 
distinctions  and  pointed  out  that  modern  melo- 
drama makes  use  of  general  types,  often  tradi- 
tional and  empty  of  veracity;  and  that  plays  with 
no  atom  of  observation  or  of  truth  may  move  us 
on  the  stage  by  virtue  of  their  situations  alone, 
of  their  emotional  appeal.  "The  object  of  the 
theater  is  to  represent  a  man  acting,  and  therefore 
to  exhibit  him  to  us  not  as  he  is  himself,  but  as 
he  bears  himself  in  his  relations  with  other  men 
and  under  the  influence  of  accidental  circum- 
stances. Now,  if  the  playwright  is  also  an  ob- 
server and  a  psychologist,  if  he  is  capable  of  letting 
us  pierce  to  the  core  of  a  character,  of  an  original 
soul,  in  the  brief  moment  when  this  soul  is  react- 
ing against  an  external  accident,  evidently  the 
72 


THREE   THEORISTS   OF   THE   THEATER 

result  will  be  more  valuable.  Yet  altho  this 
merit  is  a  welcome  addition,  it  is  not  indispensable 
in  the  theater.  In  short,  the  drama  interests  us, 
not  predominantly  by  the  depicting  of  human 
nature,  but  primarily  by  situations  and  only 
secondarily  by  the  feelings  of  those  therein  in- 
volved." 

Thirdly,  a  play  must  have  unity  of  purpose. 

"Tragedy  is  an  imitation  of  an  action  that  is 
complete  and  whole  and  of  a  certain  magnitude. 
...  A  whole  is  that  which  has  a  beginning,  a 
middle  and  an  end.  ...  A  well  constructed 
plot,  therefore,  must  neither  begin  nor  end  at 
haphazard.  ...  Of  all  plots  and  actions  the 
episodic  are  the  worst;  I  call  a  plot  episodic  in 
which  the  episodes  or  acts  succeed  one  another 
without  probable  or  necessary  sequence." 

Fourthly,  the  story  of  a  play  must  be  plausible. 
"It  is  not  the  function  of  the  poet  to  relate  what 
has  happened  but  what  may  happen, — what  is 
possible  according  to  the  law  of  probability  or 
necessity." 

Fifthly,  the  playwright  must  never  forget  the 
playhouseand  must  always  seek  to  foreseethe  effect 
to  be  produced  when  his  play  is  actually  per- 
formed. "  In  constructing  the  plot  and  working 
it  out  with  the  help  of  language,  the  poet  should 
place  the  scene,  as  far  as  possible,  before  his  eyes. 
In  this  way,  seeing  everything  with  the  utmost 
vividness,  as  if  he  were  a  spectator  of  the  action, 
73 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

he  will  discover  what  is  in  keeping  with  it  and  will 
be  most  unlikely  to  overlook  inconsistencies." 

Sixthly,  the  tragic  poet  must  avoid  both  the 
commonplace  and  the  magniloquent: — "The  per- 
fection of  style  is  to  be  clear  without  being  mean." 

Here  are  a  few  of  the  most  significant  of  Aris- 
totle's suggestions  to  intending  dramatists;  they 
are  simple  enough  all  of  them,  and  obvious  enough, 
not  to  say  indisputable.  Yet  they  are  sufficient 
to  justify  the  assertion  of  Professor  Bywater  that 
when  Aristotle  was  engaged  only  in  showing  how 
to  construct  a  play  in  accord  with  the  material 
conditions  of  the  Athenian  theater,  he  succeeded 
also  "in  formulating  once  for  all  the  great  first 
principles  of  dramatic  art,  the  canons  of  dramatic 
logic,  which  even  the  most  adventurous  of 
modern  dramatists  can  only  at  his  peril  forget 
or  set  at  naught." 

Ill 

The  modern  appreciation  of  Aristotle  dates 
from  Lessing,  for  it  was  the  German  critic  who 
brusht  aside  the  swarm  of  commentators  to 
scrutinize  the  actual  text  of  Aristotle  and  to  see 
for  himself  what  the  Greek  had  actually  said  and 
what  he  actually  meant.  Lessing  it  was  who 
made  the  pregnant  suggestion  that  if  we  seek  a 
full  understanding  of  the  'Poetics'  we  must 
consider  that  truncated  treatise  in  connection 
with  Aristotle's  better  preserved  '  Rhetoric'  and 
74 


THREE   THEORISTS  OF   THE   THEATER 

'  Ethics.'  We  may  hail  Lessing,  even  tho  he  was 
greatly  stimulated  by  Dacier  and  by  Diderot,  as 
the  real  leader  of  the  movement  to  repeal  the  clas- 
sicist code  of  the  drama,  erected  mainly  upon  mis- 
understanding and  misinterpretation  of  Aristotle. 

Perhaps  Lessing  suffers  today  from  the  com- 
plete success  of  his  polemic  against  the  French 
critics  who  had  adopted  the  windspun  and  wire- 
drawn theories  of  the  Italians.  In  his  day  and  in 
his  country,  it  was  generally  believed  that  French 
tragedy  was  a  revival  of  Greek  tragedy  and 
possibly  even  an  improvement  upon  it.  Now- 
adays we  see  so  clearly  that  there  was  no  basis  for 
this  belief  that  we  find  it  difficult  to  understand 
how  anybody  could  ever  have  held  it;  and  there- 
fore we  are  inclined  to  wonder  why  Lessing  was 
so  persistent  in  his  demonstration  of  its  absurdity. 
This  is  the  inevitable  disadvantage  of  all  triumph- 
ant polemic,  for  when  the  victory  is  once  won 
we  fail  to  perceive  the  necessity  for  killing  the 
dead  over  and  over  again. 

Lessing  was  never  overawed  by  the  authority  of 
Aristotle;  but  he  insisted,  first  of  all,  on  being 
shown  the  Greek's  own  words.  He  permitted 
no  predecessor  to  hold  him  in  pupillage,  preferring 
to  do  his  own  thinking  in  his  own  fashion.  He 
denied  the  jurisdiction  of  the  French  and  the 
Italian  and  the  Latin  critics,  tamely  accepted 
by  his  contemporaries  in  Germany.  He  took 
nothing  for  granted;  and  he  insisted  on  going 
75 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

back  to  first  principles.  He  analized  the  judg- 
ments of  those  who  have  gone  before;  and  he 
accepted  their  verdicts  only  when  he  himself 
found  the  decision  in  accord  with  the  facts. 

French  criticism  of  the  acted  drama  from  the 
Abbe  d'Aubignac  to  Nepomucene  Lemercier  is 
not  so  foolish  as  those  who  have  never  read  it 
may  be  inclined  to  suppose.  The  classicist  code 
is  hard  and  narrow,  and  it  imposes  upon  its  in- 
terpreters not  a  few  absurdities;  but  these  inter- 
preters make  shrewd  suggestions  here  and  there. 
Marmontel's  advice  to  aspiring  playwrights  is 
rich  in  sensible  remarks;  but  where  Marmontel 
only  scratcht  the  surface,  Lessing  cut  to  the  core. 
Lemercier's  twenty-five  rules  for  tragedy  and  his 
twenty-two  rules  for  comedy,  altho  pedantically 
promulgated,  are  most  of  them  acceptable  enough; 
but  Lessing  did  not  descend  to  externalities  like 
these,  being  moved  always  to  ascertain  the  inner 
qualities  which  alone  vitalize  a  work  of  art. 
Diderot,  from  whom  Lessing  borrowed  a  great 
deal — combating  French  influence  with  arms 
captured  from  a  Frenchman — was  fertile  in  sug- 
gestive ideas,  but  he  was  rarely  trustworthy;  and 
the  author  of  the  'Laocoon'  was  ever  a  sounder 
critic  of  art  than  the  author  of  the  '  Paradox  on  the 
Comedian.'  The  German  never  let  himself  be 
led  astray  by  his  own  theories,  and  he  achieved  a 
consistency  denied  to  the  gifted  but  irregular 
Frenchman,  partly  because  his  equipment  was 
76 


THREE   THEORISTS   OF   THE   THEATER 

more  solid  and  partly  because  his  insight  was 
more  penetrating. 

Mezieres,  in  his  preface  to  the  French  transla- 
tion of  the  '  Hamburg  Dramaturgy/  had  no  diffi- 
culty in  showing  the  extent  of  Lessing's  in- 
debtedness to  Diderot  and  also  in  exhibiting 
Lessing's  occasionally  eratic  opinions.  Mezieres 
pointed  out  that  Lessing  allowed  himself  the 
astounding  liberty  of  calling  the  comedy  of  Des- 
touches  finer  than  the  comedy  of  Moliere,  and  of 
vaunting  his  own  ability  to  rehandle  the  themes  of 
Corneille  and  Racine  more  effectively  than  they 
had  done.  It  is  true  that  Lessing  was  not  only  a 
critic  of  the  drama  but  also  a  creator  of  it,  and  that 
his  own  pieces  are  the  earliest  of  German  plays  to 
establish  themselves  in  the  theater  and  to  keep  the 
stage  after  a  century  and  a  half.  But  this  does 
not  justify  his  airy  assertion  that  he  could  surpass 
Corneille  and  Racine  in  their  own  field. 

The  explanation  of  his  uncharacteristic  boast 
is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  Lessing  was  fighting 
Voltaire,  and  that  he  was  thus  tempted  to  dis- 
parage Corneille  and  Racine,  in  whose  footsteps 
Voltaire  was  following.  The  German  critic-creator 
wisht  to  explode  the  belief  of  his  countrymen  in 
the  infallibility  of  French  criticism  and  in  the 
indisputable  superiority  of  French  tragedy.  In 
the  ardor  of  battle  he  was  not  always  so  par- 
ticular as  he  might  be  in  the  choice  of  weapons 
he  snatcht  up  for  attack  and  defense.  As  Lowell 
77 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

pointed  out,  Lessing's  intellect  "was  commonly 
stirred  to  motion  by  the  impulse  of  other  minds, 
and  struck  out  its  brightest  flashes  by  collision 
with  them."  It  must  be  remembered  also  that 
Lessing's  discussion  of  dramatic  art  is  not  a  treat- 
ise like  Aristotle's,  written  out  at  leisure  after 
full  premeditation;  it  is  a  journalistic  job,  com- 
posed as  occasion  served;  its  successive  chap- 
ters, if  they  may  be  so  called,  are  evoked  by  the 
particular  plays  which  chanced  to  be  produced 
at  the  Hamburg  theater.  Very  few  of  these 
plays  are  known  today,  even  by  name,  except  to 
readers  of  the  '  Dramaturgy.'  It  is  testimony 
to  Lessing's  critical  faculty  that  he  could  find 
a  suggestive  text  for  shrewd  comment  in  preten- 
tious German  pieces  and  in  artless  German  adap- 
tations from  contemporary  French  drama.  As 
subject  matter  for  discussion,  Lessing  lackt 
precisely  what  Aristotle  had, — a  living  dramatic 
literature  in  his  own  language.  Nor  had  he  been 
privileged  to  behold  on  the  stage  any  of  the 
masterpieces  of  Shakspere  and  Calderon  with 
which  he  had  acquainted  himself  in  the  study. 
Where  Aristotle  had  a  body  of  doctrine  clearly 
and  completely  thought  out  before  he  began  on 
his  book,  Lessing  had  to  extemporize  his  opinions 
from  day  to  day  during  his  single  year  of  service  as 
theatrical  reviewer.  There  need  be  no  wonder 
that  the  'Hamburg  Dramaturgy'  is  not  com- 
pact; and  the  real  cause  for  surprize  is  that  the 
78 


THREE   THEORISTS   OF  THE   THEATER 

collected  articles  are  as  coherent  and  as  consistent 
as  they  are.  Nor  is  there  any  necessity  to  deny 
that  some  of  these  articles  reveal  themselves  now 
as  mere  journalism,  sufficient  unto  the  day  but 
lacking  in  permanence,  or  that  Lessing  does  not 
hesitate  now  and  again  to  avail  himself  of  the 
privileges  of  the  journalist, — to  reiterate,  to  ex- 
aggerate even  if  need  be,  to  emphasize  his  asser- 
tions by  overstatement  so  as  to  force  his  casual 
readers  to  apprehend  his  meaning.  That  there 
are  dry  places  here  and  there  is  due  to  the  aridity 
of  the  plays  he  had  perforce  to  deal  with.  This 
was  unfortunate  for  Lessing,  who  seems  to  have 
wearied  of  his  hortatory  task  before  the  year 
of  his  servitude  was  out;  and  it  was  also  un- 
fortunate for  us  since  the  finer  the  work  of  art 
to  be  criticized  the  more  strenuous  is  likely 
to  be  the  effort  of  the  critic  to  appreciate  it 
worthily. 

Even  if  the  year's  work  which  makes  up  the 
'Hamburg  Dramaturgy'  must  be  described  as 
journalism,  still  bearing  the  traces  of  its  news- 
paper origin,  we  cannot  but  recognize  in  Lessing 
an  incomparable  journalist,  without  peer  in  in- 
sight and  in  equipment,  abundant  in  sympathy 
for  what  is  best, — altho  a  little  lacking  in  disin- 
terestedness so  far  as  the  French  are  concerned. 
And  for  journalism  his  style  was  exactly  adapted. 
He  was  so  clear,  so  sharp-sighted,  so  plain-spoken, 
so  sturdy  in  common  sense  that  he  frequently 
79 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

appeared  to  be  witty,  altho  his  wit  was  rarely 
verbal  or  merely  wit  for  its  own  sake.  It  never 
had  the  flashing  felicity  of  Voltaire's  style — of 
that  Voltaire  whom  Lessing  admired  even  while 
attacking.  It  was  from  Voltaire  that  Lessing 
borrowed  the  useful  device  of  using  narrative 
as  an  implicit  criticism  of  the  plot  under  con- 
sideration. And  we  may  apply  to  Lessing  the 
praise  Lord  Morley  bestowed  on  Voltaire,  that 
his  "work,  from  first  to  last,  was  alert  with  un- 
quenchable life.  Some  of  it,  much  of  it,  has 
ceased  to  be  alive  for  us  now.  .  .  .  Yet  we 
recognize  that  none  of  it  was  ever  the  dreary  still- 
birth of  a  mind  of  hearsays.  There  is  no  mechani- 
cal transmission  of  untested  bits  of  current 
coin." 

Yet  few  of  Lessing's  precepts  of  playmaking, 
rooted  as  they  are  in  common  sense  and  instantly 
acceptable  by  all  students  of  the  stage,  can  be 
detacht  from  the  criticism  of  the  specific  pieces 
that  evoked  them.  He  restated  principles  laid 
down  by  Aristotle;  he  clarified  pregnant  sayings 
of  Diderot;  he  may  have  derived  from  d'Aubignac 
the  belief  that  unflinching  fidelity  to  the  acci- 
dental facts  of  history  is  not  to  be  demanded 
from  the  writer  of  a  historical  play, — altho  he  may 
have  found  this  implicit  in  one  of  Aristotle's 
paragraphs.  He  was  forever  going  back  to  the 
great  Greek  and  he  was  incessant  in  declaring 
that,  after  all,  Aristotle  was  not  a  Frenchman. 
80 


THREE   THEORISTS   OF   THE   THEATER 

He  was  quite  as  insistent  in  tackling  Voltaire 
and  in  asserting  that  after  all  the  great  French- 
man was  not  a  Greek.  He  spent  half-a-hundred 
pages  to  prove  that  Voltaire  had  taken  his  'Merope* 
from  Maffei  and  had  failed  to  better  it  in  the  bor- 
rowing. And  he  was  sometimes  more  negative  than 
affirmative,  more  anxious  to  discredit  the  French 
critics  and  to  disestablish  the  classicist  theorists 
than  to  declare  his  own  sounder  and  saner  prin- 
ciples. 

IV 

Aristotle  and  Lessing  are  the  two  foremost 
theorists  of  the  theater;  and  there  is  no  third 
to  be  rankt  with  them.  Yet  at  an  interval  after 
them  and  far  in  advance  of  any  fourth  claimant, 
comes  Francisque  Sarcey,  inferior  to  both  in 
insight  and  equipment,  even  if  not  inferior  in 
sympathy  and  disinterestedness.  He  was  a 
journalist  like  Lessing;  but  he  did  not  confine  his 
activity  to  a  single  year,  continuing  it  in  fact  for 
nearly  two  score  years.  He  resembled  Lessing 
again  in  that  he  did  not  begin  with  a  body  of 
doctrine,  with  a  code  of  laws  formulated  in  ad- 
vance of  any  possible  application.  Like  the 
English  judges  he  developt  the  law  slowly  from 
the  successive  cases  that  were  brought  before  him, 
until  at  the  last  he  arrived  at  a  consciousness  of 
the  fundamental  principles  of  the  art  he  loved 
devotedly  his  whole  life  long. 


THE    PRINCIPLES  OF   PLAYMAKING 

Sarcey's  body  of  doctrine,  when  once  he  was  in 
possession  of  it,  was  his  own;  it  was  the  result  of 
his  incomparable  experience  of  the  theater  and  of 
his  incessant  study  of  the  spectators.  As  a  con- 
sequence of  his  integrity  and  of  his  critical 
shrewdness,  his  doctrine  is  substantially  identical 
with  Aristotle's  and  with  Lessing's.  Indepen- 
dently he  arrived  at  the  same  conclusions  that 
they  had  reacht  before  him.  As  he  told  me 
once,  whenever  he  took  down  the  French  transla- 
tion of  the  'Hamburg  Dramaturgy'  and  found 
that  Lessing  had  anticipated  him  in  one  of  his 
own  discoveries,  he  rejoiced,  feeling  thereby  rein- 
forced in  his  conviction  that  his  discovery  was 
solidly  based  on  truth. 

Sarcey  was  more  narrowly  a  man  of  the  theater 
than  either  Aristotle  or  Lessing;  and  this  is  per- 
haps a  main  reason  why  he  does  not  deserve  to 
be  placed  by  their  side.  It  is  true  that  he  had 
many  outside  interests  and  that  he  was  an  inde- 
fatigable writer  on  all  sorts  of  topics,  literary  and 
social  and  political;  but  his  heart  was  ever  in  the 
theater,  and  to  him  the  art  of  the  drama  had  a 
supreme  importance  which  it  had  not  to  Lessing 
or  to  Aristotle,  because  they  had  a  broader  outlook 
than  he,  a  more  comprehensive  philosophy. 

Yet  whatever  his  limitations,  he  was  the  most 

inspiring  and  suggestive  critic  of  the  acted  drama 

in  the  nineteenth  century.     Not  so  dogmatic  as 

Bruneti&re,    not   so   brilliant   as    Lemaitre,    not 

82 


THREE  THEORISTS  OF  THE   THEATER 

SO  versatile  as  Faguet,  he  easily  surpast 
all  three  in  his  intimacy  with  the  playhouse  and 
with  its  people,  actors  as  well  as  authors;  and  he 
was  therefore  a  sounder  critic  of  that  part  of  the 
drama  which  is  more  specifically  of  the  theater. 
His  experience  was  far  longer  than  Lessing's  and 
his  subject  matter  is  richer  and  more  varied. 
Where  Aristotle  had  the  Greek  drama  as  his  sole 
material  for  the  deduction  of  his  principles  and 
where  Lessing  had  only  the  plays  which  happened 
to  be  acted  in  a  single  German  theater  in  a  single 
year,  even  tho  he  ranged  at  will  in  search  of 
parallels  thruout  dramatic  literature,  Sarcey  had 
all  the  theaters  of  the  capital  of  France  for  forty 
years  when  they  were  representing  not  only  the 
contemporary  and  the  classic  drama  in  his  own 
tongue  but  also  many  of  the  masterpieces  of  the 
drama  in  other  literatures,  ancient  and  modern. 
It  may  be  admitted  that  Sarcey  did  not  profit 
as  he  might  by  his  opportunity  to  see  on  the  stage 
the  mightiest  plays  of  Greece  and  England.  He 
was  too  fundamentally  a  man  of  his  own  coun- 
try, and  even  of  his  own  time,  really  to  relish 
Sophocles  and  Shakspere.  Moreover,  he  was  a 
little  inclined  to  be  the  slave  of  his  own  doctrine 
and  to  hold  this  a  little  too  narrowly.  He  was 
only  following  the  wise  Aristotle  and  the  shrewd 
Lessing  when  he  insisted  on  the  superior  impor- 
tance of  plot,  of  story,  of  action;  but  he  went 
ahead  of  them  in  his  appreciation  of  the  mechan- 
83 


THE    PRINCIPLES    OF    PLAYMAKING 

ical  dexterity  of  plotmaking.  In  fact,  he  was  in- 
clined almost  to  accept  skill  in  craftsmanship,  the 
skill  of  a  Scribe,  for  example,  as  the  final  word  in 
dramatic  accomplishment,  instead  of  seeing  clearly 
that  this  skill  is  only  the  first  word.  Construc- 
tion, the  adroit  building  up  of  a  series  of  situa- 
tions— this  is  a  prime  requisite  of  dramatic 
art,  without  which  the  art  cannot  exist;  but  it  is 
only  the  beginning  and  it  can  never  be  an  end  in 
itself,  as  it  was  in  the  so-called  "well-made  play" 
of  Scribe  and  of  the  cloud  of  collaborators  and 
disciples  that  encompast  Scribe  about. 

Still  it  must  be  urged  that  in  insisting  upon  the 
duty  of  providing  every  play  with  an  inner  skele- 
ton strong  enough  to  support  it  unaided,  even  if 
he  insisted  at  times  a  little  too  exclusively  upon 
this,  Sarcey  was  exerting  a  most  wholesome  in- 
fluence, especially  in  these  days  when  the  novelists 
are  invading  the  theater  and  when  some  of  them 
seek  to  confuse  the  essential  differences  between 
the  art  of  the  drama  and  the  art  of  prose-fiction. 
The  first  and  foremost  of  these  differences  is  due 
to  the  immitigable  fact  that  the  novel  may  appeal 
only  to  the  individual  reader  whereas  the  play 
must  appeal  to  a  crowd  of  spectators.  The 
theater  is  "a.  function  of  the  crowd,"  so  a  British 
critic  has  declared;  and  in  so  declaring  he  was 
only  echoing  Sarcey,  who  asserted  that  he  could 
deduce  all  the  laws  of  dramatic  art  from  the  single 
fact  that  every  play  implies  the  presence  of  an 
84 


THREE  THEORISTS  OF  THE  THEATER 

audience.  This  is  why  Sarcey  was  so  indefatiga- 
ble in  his  observation  of  the  playgoers  and  in  his 
analysis  of  their  characteristics,  their  predilec- 
tions, their  prejudices,  their  unconscious  prefer- 
ences. Here  he  was  doing  explicitly  what  Aristotle 
and  Lessing  had  done  implicitly. 

Sarcey's  attitude  when  he  set  himself  down  at 
the  first  performance  of  a  new  play  was  very  like 
that  of  the  burgher  of  Paris  who  ventured  to  take 
a  hand  in  the  exacerbated  discussion  evoked  by 
Corneille's  'Cid.'  "I  have  never  read  Aristotle 
and  I  know  nothing  about  the  Rules,  but  I 
decide  upon  the  merit  of  a  play  in  proportion  to 
the  pleasure  I  receive."  Sarcey  had  read  Aris- 
totle and  he  was  familiar  with  the  Rules;  but  he 
judged  tragedy  and  comedy,  problem-play  and 
farce,  in  proportion  to  the  pleasure  he  himself 
received,  but  also  and  more  particularly  in  pro- 
portion to  the  pleasure  received  by  his  fellow  spec- 
tators. He  came  in  time  to  be  very  expert  in 
interpreting  these  unconscious  preferences  of  the 
crowd,  which  the  dramatist  has  always  to  reckon 
with. 

His  suggestive  theory  of  the  scenes  inher- 
ent in  every  story,  which  demand  to  be  shown 
in  action,  the  famous  theory  of  the  scenes  a  f aire, 
Obligatory  Scenes,  was  the  result  of  his  ability 
to  translate  the  dumb  disappointment  of  the 
playgoers  when  the  dramatist  neglects  to  set  be- 
fore their  eyes  the  interesting  episode  he  has  led 


THE   PRINCIPLES   OF   PLAYMAKING 

them  to  expect.  This  is  one  of  Sarcey's  most 
important  contributions  to  the  theory  of  the 
theater;  and  it  is  his  own,  altho  there  are  inti- 
mations of  it  in  earher  writers — notably  in  Cor- 
neille's  third  'Discourse  on  the  Dramatic  Poem.' 
Sarcey  may  have  had  predecessors  also  in  his 
theory  of  the  necessary  conventions  of  the  drama. 
Every  art  can  exist  only  by  its  departure  from  the 
facts  of  life;  the  painter  and  the  sculptor,  for  ex- 
ample, are  permitted  to  represent  men  as  motion- 
less, altho  absolute  absence  of  movement  is  im- 
possible to  human  beings.  The  drama  demands 
the  condensation  and  heightening  of  the  dialog 
and  the  suppression  of  everything  accidental, 
altho  accident  surrounds  us  on  all  sides.  These 
liberties  with  life  are  for  the  benefit  of  the  specta- 
tors in  the  theater,  who  want  to  see  and  to  hear 
and  have  their  interest  focust  upon  the  essentials 
of  the  story  set  before  them  on  the  stage;  and  by 
convention,  that  is  by  tacit  agreement,  by  im- 
plied contract,  the  spectators  gladly  permit  the 
playwright  to  depart  from  the  facts  of  life  so  that 
he  can  delight  them  with  the  truth  of  life. 

It  is  greatly  to  be  regretted  that  Sarcey  never 
composed  his  promised  'History  of  Dramatic 
Conventions';  but  as  he  once  said  to  me,  "If  I 
had  ever  written  my  book,  with  what  could  I  fill 
my  weekly  articles?"  Here  he  spoke  out  in 
accord  with  his  frank  and  sturdy  common  sense — 
that  common  sense  which  according  to  Vauvenar- 
86 


THREE   THEORISTS  OF  THE  THEATER 

gues  must  be  credited  rather  to  character  than  to 
intellect. 

The  influence  of  Lessing  on  the  contemporary 
German  theater  was  due  not  so  much  to  his  dra- 
matic criticism  as  to  his  dramatic  creation, — to  the 
three  or  four  plays  in  which  he  proved  that  it  was 
possible  to  put  German  life  and  German  character 
on  the  stage  at  once  effectively  and  sincerely. 
Sarcey  may  have  written  a  trifling  farce  or  two  in 
his  youth,  but  his  influence  on  the  contemporary 
French  theater  was  due  wholly  to  his  criticism. 
He  had  the  good  fortune,  denied  to  Lessing,  of 
working  in  a  period  when  there  was  a  living  dra- 
matic literature  in  his  own  language.  He  was 
able  to  interpret  and  to  encourage  Augier  and 
Dumas  fils,  Meilhac  and  Halevy,  Labiche  and 
Rostand,  very  much  as  Boileau  had  interpreted 
and  encouraged  Moliere.  The  principles  of  play- 
making  these  dramatists  were  applying  were  pre- 
cisely those  which  Sarcey  was  proclaiming. 

It  is  difficult  to  overestimate  the  influence  ex- 
erted by  Sarcey  upon  the  development  of  the 
drama  in  France  in  the  final  third  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  His  theories  of  the  theater  were 
adopted  and  disseminated  by  other  critics,  often 
by  writers  as  different  as  Brunetiere,  Lemaitre 
and  Faguet.  In  the  main,  and  for  years,  this 
influence  was  helpful;  yet  a  time  came  at  last 
when  Sarcey's  principles,  as  he  himself  continued 
to  declare  them,  were  felt  to  be  a  little  too  narrow 
87 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

and  a  little  too  rigidly  insisted  upon.  M.  Gus- 
tave  Lanson,  for  example,  has  denounced  Sarcey 
for  unduly  confining  his  attention  to  technic,  for 
overvaluing  the  form  of  a  play  at  the  expense  of 
its  content,  and  for  following  rather  than  guiding 
the  taste  of  the  public.  There  is  a  certain  jus- 
tice in  these  charges;  and  it  may  be  admitted  that 
in  his  old  age  Sarcey  was  a  willing  prisoner  in  his 
own  code  of  the  drama.  But  to  grant  this  is  not 
to  deny  the  abiding  utility  of  his  contributions  to 
the  theory  of  the  theater. 


At  bottom  the  body  of  doctrine  which  Sarcey 
built  up  for  his  own  use  as  a  critic  of  the  acted 
drama  is  substantially  the  same  as  that  which 
we  find  in  Lessing  and  in  Aristotle.  These  three 
theorists  of  the  theater  estimate  plays  primarily 
by  the  test  of  the  playhouse  and  by  analysis  of 
the  desires  of  the  playgoers.  The  several  play- 
houses in  which  the  Greek  and  the  German  and 
the  Frenchman  took  their  seats  varied  widely  in 
their  physical  conditions,  in  their  dimensions  and 
in  their  shapes.  But  these  various  playhouses 
had  one  characteristic  in  common,  a  characteristic 
which  is  to  be  discovered  in  almost  every  kind 
of  theater  before  the  final  quarter  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  I  n  all  these  playhouses,  the  actor 
was  surrounded  on  three  sides  by  the  audience. 


THREE   THEORISTS  OF   THE   THEATER 

In  the  Attic  theater  the  performers  stood  in  the 
orchestra  which  curved  into  the  hillside  of  the 
Acropolis;  in  Shakspere's  theater,  as  in  Moliere's, 
certain  spectators  were  accommodated  with  seats 
on  the  stage  itself;  and  in  the  theaters  for  which 
Beaumarchais  and  Sheridan  composed  their 
comedies  the  stage  jutted  out  far  into  the  house, 
so  that  the  actors  actually  turned  their  backs 
on  a  certain  proportion  of  the  audience.  But  in 
the  final  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  this 
platform-stage  gave  way  to  the  picture-frame 
stage  to  which  we  are  accustomed  in  our  snug 
modern  theaters;  and  nowadays  the  actor  is  not 
in  close  proximity  to  the  spectators;  he  is  not 
surrounded  by  them  on  three  sides;  he  is  with- 
drawn behind  a  picture-frame;  and  he  is  bidden 
not  to  get  out  of  the  picture. 

This  change  from  the  platform-stage  of  the  past 
to  the  picture-frame  stage  of  the  present  is  per- 
haps the  most  important  which  has  ever  taken 
place  in  all  the  long  history  of  the  drama;  and  it 
is  too  recent  for  us  to  forecast  all  its  consequences, 
altho  we  may  be  certain  that  they  will  be  many 
and  striking,  influencing  the  method  of  every 
writer  for  the  stage.  As  the  dramatist  always 
plans  his  plays  with  the  intent  and  the  desire  of 
seeing  them  performed  before  an  audience,  by 
actors,  and  in  a  theater,  any  change  in  the  con- 
ditions of  the  theater  will  force  changes  in  the 
method  of  both  actors  and  dramatist,  and  it 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

may  also  bring  about  changes  in  the  unconscious 
preferences  of  the  audience.  It  is  an  interesting 
question  whether  these  changes  will  or  will  not 
invalidate  in  any  way  the  accredited  theory  of 
the  theater  as  this  has  been  expounded  by  Les- 
sing  and  Aristotle,  who  had  no  other  plays  as  a 
basis  of  study  than  those  composed  in  accord 
with  the  conditions  of  the  platform-stage;  and 
even  Sarcey  could  see  only  the  beginnings  of  the 
more  modern  drama  composed  specifically  for  the 
picture-frame  stage. 

The  audiences  of  the  past  who  knew  only  the 
platform-stage,  expected  to  see  thereon  a  story, 
with  a  well-knit  plot,  setting  forth  a  clash  of  con- 
tending desires.  Will  the  spectators  of  the  future, 
sitting  in  front  of  the  picture-frame  stage,  retain 
this  expectation?  Or  will  they  be  contented  with 
pictures  of  life  and  character  held  together  by  a 
slacker  thread  of  story,  scarcely  strong  enough 
to  be  called  a  plot,  and  lacking  in  any  clearly 
defined  conflict  of  volition?  More  than  twenty 
years  ago,  William  Archer,  that  acutest  of 
British  dramatic  critics,  posed  this  question 
clearly:  "What  is  the  essential  element  of 
drama?  Is  it  the  telling  of  a  story  after  a  cer- 
tain establisht  method  which  has  been  found  by 
long  experience  to  answer  to  the  mental  require- 
ments of  an  average  audience  ?  Or  is  it  the  mere 
scenic  presentment  of  passages  from  real  life? 
Should  the  dramatist  look  primarily  to  action, 
90 


THREE   THEORISTS   OF   THE   THEATER 

letting  character  take  its  chance?  Or  primarily 
to  character,  letting  action  look  after  itself?" 

Mr.  Archer  exprest  his  own  sympathy  with  the 
latter  opinion,  holding  that  it  was  supplanting 
the  former,  which  he  admitted  to  have  been  domi- 
nant for  fifty  years  and  which  he  identified  with 
Sarcey.  But  he  might  have  identified  it  with 
Aristotle  and  admitted  that  it  had  been  dominant 
for  two  thousand  years.  Nothing  could  be  clearer 
or  more  emphatic  than  the  declaration  earlier 
quoted  from  Aristotle  that  if  you  string  together 
a  set  of  speeches  expressive  of  character,  and  well 
fmisht  in  point  of  diction  and  thought,  "you  will 
not  produce  the  essential  dramatic  effect  nearly 
so  well  as  with  a  play,  which,  however  deficient 
in  these  aspects  yet  has  a  plot  and  artistically 
constructed  incidents."  To  this  Mr.  Archer 
might  answer  that  when  Aristotle  and  Sarcey  in- 
sisted on  the  superior  value  of  plot  over  char- 
acter in  arousing  and  retaining  the  interest  of 
the  average  audience,  they  could  not  foresee  that 
the  spectators  of  the  future  in  front  of  a  picture- 
frame  stage  might  not  have  precisely  the  same 
unconscious  preferences  as  the  spectators  of  the 
past  almost  surrounding  the  platform-stage — ■ 
especially  after  these  spectators  may  have  had 
their  interest  focust  on  character,  rather  than  on 
story,  by  the  works  of  the  many  realists  who  have 
trod  the  trail  blazed  by  Balzac. 

And  to  this  retort,  the  rejoinder  is  easy, — in- 
91 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

deed,  Mr.  Archer  may  despise  it  as  a  little  too 
easy.  Admitting  that  the  change  in  the  playhouse 
may  bring  about  an  unforeseen  change  in  the  at- 
titude of  the  more  highly  cultivated  playgoers, 
still  it  is  a  little  unlikely  that  the  theories  of  the 
theater  which  we  find  expounded  by  Aristotle  first, 
then  by  Lessing,  and  lastly  by  Sarcey,  will  turn 
out  to  be  any  less  valid  in  the  next  century  than 
they  have  proved  themselves  to  be  in  the  past 
twenty  centuries.  This  much  at  least  I  may 
venture  to  predict  without  assuming  the  robe  of 
a  prophet — an  unbecoming  costume  which  I 
shall  not  dare  to  don  so  long  as  I  recall  George 
Eliot's  assertion,  that  "  of  all  the  forms  of  human 
error  prophecy  is  the  most  gratuitous." 

(1915.) 


92 


V 
IF  SHAKSPERE  SHOULD  COME  BACK?* 

1NGEN  lOUS  wits  have  often  amused  themselves 
by  imagining  the  possible  return  of  a  departed 
genius  that  he  might  mingle  for  a  few  hours  with 
men  of  the  present  generation;  and  they  have 
humorously  speculated  upon  his  emotions  when  he 
found  himself  once  again  in  the  life  he  had  left 
centuries  earlier.  They  have  wondered  what  he 
would  think  about  this  world  of  ours  today,  the 
same  as  his  of  long  ago  and  yet  not  the  same. 
What  would  he  miss  that  he  might  have  expected 
to  find  ?  What  would  he  find  that  he  could  never 
have  expected?  As  he  had  been  a  human  being 
when  he  was  in  the  flesh,  it  is  a  safe  guess  that  he 
would  be  interested  first  of  all  in  himself,  in  the 
fate  of  his  reputation,  in  the  opinion  in  which  he 
is  now  held  by  us  who  know  him  only  thru  his 
writings.  And  it  is  sad  to  think  that  many  a 
genius  would  be  grievously  disappointed  at  the 
shrinkage  of  his  fame.  If  he  had  hoped  to  see 
his  books  still  alive,  passing  from  hand  to  hand, 

*  This  paper  was  written  especially  for  'A  Book  of 
Homage  to  Shakspere.'     (Oxford  University  Press,  1916.) 
93 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

familiar  on  the  lips  as  household  words,  he  might 
be  shockt  to  discover  that  they  survived  solely 
in  the  silent  obscurity  of  a  complete  edition, 
elaborately  annotated  and  preserved  on  an  upper 
shelf  for  external  use  only.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  would  be  a  genius  now  and  then  who  had 
died  without  any  real  recognition  of  his  immortal 
gifts  and  who,  on  his  imagined  return  to  earth, 
would  be  delighted  to  discover  that  he  now 
bulkt  bigger  than  he  had  ever  dared  to  dream. 

It  is  in  this  second  and  scanty  group  that  Shak- 
spere  would  belong.  So  far  as  we  can  judge  from 
the  sparse  records  of  his  life  and  from  his  own 
writings,  he  was  modest  and  unassuming,  never 
vaunting  himself,  never  boasting  and  probably 
never  puffed  up  by  the  belief  that  he  had  any 
reason  to  boast.  What  he  had  done  was  all  in 
the  day's  work,  a  satisfaction  to  him  as  a  crafts- 
man when  he  saw  that  he  had  turned  out  a  good 
job,  but  a  keener  satisfaction  to  him  as  a  man 
of  affairs  that  he  was  thereby  getting  on  and 
laying  by  against  the  day  when  he  might  retire 
to  Stratford  to  live  the  life  of  an  English  gentle- 
man. Probably  no  other  genius  could  now  revisit 
the  earth  who  would  be  more  completely  or  more 
honestly  astonisht  by  the  effulgence  of  his  fame. 
To  suppose  that  this  would  not  be  exquisitely 
gratifying  to  him  would  be  to  suggest  that  he  was 
not  human.  Yet  a  chief  component  of  his  broad 
humanity  was  his  sense  of  humor;  as  a  man  he 
94 


IF   SHAKSPERE    SHOULD   COME    BACK f 

did  not  take  himself  too  seriously,  and  as  a  ghost 
he  would  certainly  smile  at  the  ultra-seriousness 
of  his  eulogists  and  interpreters.  A  natural 
curiosity  might  lead  him  to  look  over  a  volume  or 
two  in  the  huge  library  of  Shaksperian  criticism; 
but  these  things  would  not  detain  him  long. 
Being  modest  and  unassuming  still,  he  would  soon 
weary  of  protracted  praise. 

It  may  be  that  Shakspere  would  linger  long 
enough  over  his  critics  and  his  commentators  to 
note  that  they  have  belauded  him  abundantly  and 
superabundantly  as  a  poet,  as  a  philosopher,  as 
a  psychologist  and  as  a  playwright.  He  might 
even  be  puzzled  by  this  fourfold  classification  of 
his  gifts,  failing  for  the  moment  to  perceive  its 
precision.  When  he  read  praise  of  his  poetry, 
he  would  naturally  expect  to  see  it  supported  by 
quotation  from  his  two  narrative  poems  or  from 
his  one  sonnet-sequence.  Quite  possibly  he  might 
be  somewhat  annoyed  to  observe  that  these 
juvenile  verses,  cordially  received  on  their  original 
publication,  were  now  casually  beplastered  with 
perfunctory  epithets,  while  the  sincerest  and  most 
searching  commendation  was  bestowed  on  the 
style  and  on  the  spirit  of  the  plays,  in  their  own 
day  unconsidered  by  literary  critics  and  not  rec- 
ognized as  having  any  claim  to  be  esteemed  as 
literature.  Yet  this  commendation,  pleasing  even 
if  unforeseen,  would  not  go  to  his  head,  since 
Shakspere — if  we  may  venture  to  deduce  his  own 
95 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

views  from  the  scattered  evidence  in  liis  plays — 
had  no  unduly  exalted  opinion  of  poets  or  of 
poetry. 

If  he  might  be  agreeably  surprized  by  the  praise 
lavisht  on  him  as  a  poet,  he  would  be  frankly 
bewildered  by  the  commendation  bestowed  on  him 
as  a  philosopher.  He  knew  that  he  was  not  a 
man  of  solid  learning,  and  that  his  reading, 
even  if  wide  enough  for  his  immediate  purpose, 
had  never  been  deep.  He  might  admit  that  he 
had  a  certain  insight  into  the  affairs  of  men  and 
a  certain  understanding  of  the  intricate  inter- 
relations of  human  motives.  But  he  could  never 
have  considered  himself  as  an  original  thinker, 
advancing  the  boundaries  of  knowledge  or  push- 
ing speculation  closer  to  the  confines  of  the  un- 
knowable. All  he  had  sought  to  do  in  the  way 
of  philosophy  was  now  and  again  to  phrase  afresh 
as  best  he  could  one  or  another  of  the  eternal  com- 
monplaces, which  need  to  be  minted  anew  for  the 
use  of  every  oncoming  generation.  If  a  natural 
curiosity  should  tempt  Shakspere  to  turn  over 
a  few  pages  of  his  critics  to  discover  exactly  what 
there  was  in  his  writings  to  give  him  rank  among 
the  philosophers,  he  would  probably  be  more 
puzzled  than  before,  until  his  sense  of  humor 
effected  a  speedy  rescue. 

Bewildered  as  Shakspere  might  be  to  see  him- 
self dissected  as  a  philosopher,  he  would  be  startled 
to  discover  himself  described  also  as  a  psychol- 
ogist. To  him  the  word  itself  would  be  unknown 
96 


IF   SHAKSPERE   SHOULD   COME    BACK? 

and  devoid  of  meaning,  strange  in  sound  and 
abhorrent  in  appearance.  Even  after  it  had  been 
translated  to  him  with  explanation  that  he  de- 
served discussion  as  a  psychologist  because  he 
had  created  a  host  of  veracious  characters  and 
had  carried  them  thru  the  climax  of  their  careers 
with  subtle  self-revelation,  he  might  still  wonder 
at  this  undue  regard  for  the  persons  in  his  plays, 
whom  he  had  considered  not  so  much  vital  charac- 
ters as  effective  acting-parts  devised  by  him  to 
suit  the  several  capacities  of  his  fellow  actors, 
Burbage  and  Arnim,  Heming  and  Condell.  It 
might  be  that  these  creatures  of  his  invention 
were  more  than  parts  fitted  to  these  actors;  but 
none  the  less  had  they  taken  shape  in  his  brain 
first  of  all  as  parts  intended  specifically  for  per- 
formance by  specific  tragedians  and  comedians. 

Only  when  Shakspere  read  commendation  of 
his  skill  as  a  playwright,  pure  and  simple,  as  a 
maker  of  plays  to  be  performed  by  actors  in  a 
theater  and  before  an  audience,  so  constructed 
as  to  reward  the  efforts  of  the  performers  and  to 
arouse  and  sustain  the  interest  of  the  spectators — 
only  then  would  he  fail  to  be  surprized  at  his 
posthumous  reputation.  He  could  not  be  un- 
aware that  his  plays,  comic  and  tragic,  or  at  least 
that  the  best  of  them,  written  in  the  middle  of 
his  career  as  a  dramatist,  were  more  adroitly  put 
together  than  the  pieces  of  any  of  his  predecessors 
and  contemporaries.  He  could  not  forget  the 
pains  he  had  taken  to  knit  together  the  successive 
97 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

situations  into  a  compelling  plot,  to  provide  his 
story  with  an  articulated  backbone  of  controlling 
motive,  to  stiffen  the  action  with  moments  of 
tense  suspense,  to  urge  it  forward  to  its  inevitable 
and  irresistible  climax,  to  achieve  effects  of  con- 
trast, and  to  relieve  the  tragic  strain  with  inter- 
mittent humor.  And  even  if  it  might  mean  little 
or  nothing  to  him  that  he  was  exalted  to  a  place 
beside  and  above  Sophocles,  the  master  of  ancient 
tragedy,  and  Moliere,  the  master  of  modern  com- 
edy, he  might  well  be  gratified  to  be  recognized  at 
last  as  a  most  accomplisht  craftsman,  ever  dexter- 
ous in  solving  the  problems  of  dramaturgic  technic. 
These  fanciful  suggestions  are  based  on  the 
belief  that  Shakspere — like  every  other  of  the 
supreme  artists  of  the  world — "builded  better 
than  he  knew";  and  that  this  is  a  main  reason 
why  his  work  abides  unendingly  interesting  to  us 
three  centuries  after  his  death.  He  seems  to 
have  written,  partly  for  self-expression,  of  course, 
but  chiefly  for  the  delight  of  his  contemporaries, 
with  no  thought  for  our  opinion  fifteen  score  years 
later;  and  yet  he  wrought  so  firmly,  so  largely  and 
so  loftily  that  we  may  rightly  read  into  his  works 
a  host  of  meanings  which  he  did  not  consciously 
intend — and  for  which  he  can  take  the  credit, 
none  the  less,  because  only  he  could  have  put  them 
there. 

(1916.) 

98 


VI 

SHAKSPERIAN    STAGE-TRADITIONS* 


IT  is  unreasonable  to  expect  that  a  financier, 
an  artist  or  an  actor  should  be  able  to  talk  en- 
tertainingly or  to  write  instructively  about  his 
work  in  life.  Sufficient  is  it  if  he  can  do  this 
work  satisfactorily,  by  dint  of  native  gift;  and 
we  have  no  right  to  demand  that  he  should  al- 
ways be  conscious  of  his  processes.  It  is  the 
business  of  the  financier  to  make  money  useful 
— of  the  artist  to  paint  pictures  or  to  model 
statues,  to  design  buildings  or  to  lay  out  gardens, 
— of  the  actor  to  delight  us  by  the  impersonation 
of  character  involved  in  situation;  and  it  is  not 
necessary  that  any  one  of  them  should  be  a  theorist 
of  the  art  whereby  he  earns  his  living.  Yet  now 
and  again  artists  appear  who  happen  to  possess 
the  critical  faculty  as  well  as  the  creative;  and 
whenever  one  thus  doubly  endowed  is  moved  to 
discuss  the  practice  of  his  calling  and  the  princi- 

*  This  paper  was  contributed  to  '  Shaksperian  Studies' 
(Columbia  University  Press,  1916);  and  it  was  read  at  a 
meeting  of  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Letters,  on 
March  30th,  1916. 

99 


THE    PRINCIPLES    OF    PLAYMAKING 

pies  of  his  craft,  the  rest  of  us  will  do  well  to  listen 
attentively  on  the  likely  chance  of  picking  up  sug- 
gestions from  which  we  may  profit.  What  Reyn- 
olds and  Fromentin  and  La  Farge  said  about 
painting  has  an  abiding  value;  and  so  have  the 
less  elaborate  considerations  of  acting  for  which 
we  are  indebted  to  Talma,  to  Coquelin  and  to 
Jefferson. 

In  'Art  and  the  Actor,'  Coquelin's  plea  for  a 
fuller  recognition  of  the  importance  and  dignity 
of  the  histrionic  profession,  we  are  told  that 
"there  are  but  few  masterpieces  of  dramatic 
literature  so  perfect  that  the  actor  cannot  find 
something  to  add  to  them,  if  so  inclined."  This 
assertion  will  seem  boastful  only  to  those  belated 
expounders  who  still  seem  to  think  that  Sophocles 
and  Shakspere  and  Moliere  wrote  their  plays 
solely  for  us  moderns  to  peruse  and  who  appear 
to  believe  blindly  that  these  plays,  composed 
expressly  for  the  stage,  will  yet  render  up  their  full 
content  to  a  lonely  reader  in  the  study.  The 
perusal  of  the  text  will  put  us  in  possession  of  all 
the  words  of  the  dramatic  poet;  but  only  by  per- 
formance in  the  theater  itself  is  the  spirit  of  a 
true  drama  made  manifest  and  only  before  an 
actual  audience  can  we  gage  its  appeal  to  the  soul 
of  the  multitude.  The  more  familiar  an  open- 
minded  reader  may  be  with  the  printed  lines  of 
a  dramatic  masterpiece,  the  more  likely  is  he 
to  be  delightedly  surprized  by  the  richness  of 

100 


SHAKSPERIAN    STAGE-TRADITIONS 

detail  and  the  fresh  revelation  of  meaning  when 
at  last  he  has  the  privilege  of  seeing  the  play  per- 
formed; and  this  rich  revelation  is  always  more 
or  less  due  to  the  inventive  skill  of  the  performers 
in  elaborating  the  latent  possibilities  of  the  dialog, 
in  short,  to  the  "something  added  by  the  actor." 
The  devoted  student  who  dwells  remote  from 
theaters,  and  who  is  thereby  deprived  of  all  op- 
portunity to  see  Shakspere's  comedies  and  trag- 
edies on  the  stage  itself,  may  worship  the  poet 
with  unquestioning  idolatry;  but  he  is  in  no  posi- 
tion to  estimate  the  full  power  of  the  playwright. 
He  does  not  suspect  how  much  more  varied  and 
colored  and  moving  these  comedies  and  these 
tragedies  are  when  their  characters  are  sustained 
by  flesh-and-blood  performers,  when  the  words 
take  on  a  new  magic  by  the  modulated  tones  of 
the  human  voice,  and  when  the  action  is  illustrated 
and  illuminated  by  the  appropriate  by-play  of  the 
actors.  This  by-play,  which  is  often  team-play, 
this  stage-business,  as  it  is  called,  has  been  de- 
vised by  successive  generations  of  ingenious  per- 
formers, every  generation  retaining  the  best  of  the 
inventions  of  its  predecessors  and  handing  these 
along  (augmented  by  its  own  contributions)  to 
the  generation  that  comes  after.  Today  the 
stage-manager  who  undertakes  to  produce  a 
play  of  Shakspere's  has  at  his  command  an  im- 
mense body  of  these  traditions,  many  of  which 
he  may  prefer  not  to  utilize,  altho  he  is  certain 

lOI 

UNIVtKSlTY  OF  CALli 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

to  preserve  others  which  serve  to  bring  into  high 
reHef  the  inner  significance  of  vital  episodes. 

Such  a  body  of  gestures  and  actions  is  cherisht 
by  the  Comedie  Fran^aise  and  utiHzed  in  its  per- 
formances of  MoHere's  comedies.  "There  are 
certain  traditions  at  the  Theatre  Fran^ais,"  so 
Coquehn  told  us  in  his  address  on  the  actor's 
art,  "without  which  Moliere  is  never  played,  and 
which  the  spectator,  becoming  a  reader,  mentally 
supplies  as  he  sits  by  his  fireside,  as  one  supplies 
omissions  in  an  incomplete  copy."  Some  of  these 
traditions  are  possibly  derived  directly  from  the 
original  performances  when  the  author-actor  was 
the  manager  of  the  company;  and  some  of  them 
are  the  contribution  of  comedians  as  recent  as 
Coquelin  himself.  They  are  so  many,  and  they 
aid  so  amply  in  the  interpretation  of  the  plays, 
that  Regnier  brought  out  an  edition  of  '  Tar- 
tuff  e'  wherein  the  best  of  the  traditions  which 
cluster  around  MoHere's  masterpiece  were  all 
carefully  and  elaborately  set  down  to  vivify  the 
dialog.  Regnier  called  this  the  'Tartuffe  des 
Comediens';  and  Coquelin  once  told  me  that  he 
proposed  to  continue  his  teacher's  task  and  to 
edit  other  of  MoHere's  more  important  comedies 
with  a  similar  amplitude  of  histrionic  annotation. 
It  is  greatly  to  be  regretted  that  the  project 
was  never  carried  out;  no  existing  edition  of 
Moliere  would  surpass  this  in  interest  or  in  utility, 
if  it  had  been  prepared  with  the  skill,  the  tact, 

102 


SHAKSPERIAN    STAGE-TRADITIONS 

and  the  scholarship  displayed  by  Regnier  in  his 
single  volume. 

Coquelin  asserted  that  the  spectator  of  Moli^re, 
becoming  a  reader,  supplied  mentally  the  illus- 
trative actions  which  he  could  not  find  in  the 
text.  But  how  about  the  reader  of  Moliere  who 
has  never  been  a  spectator?  His  memory  can- 
not supply  this  material;  and  even  if  his  imagina- 
tion is  active,  he  can  never  invent  as  adroitly 
or  as  abundantly  as  the  actors  themselves, 
charged  with  the  high  responsibility  of  actual 
performance  and  trained  to  scrutinize  the  dialog 
assiduously  in  search  of  histrionic  opportunity. 
The  task  which  Regnier  began  and  which  Coquelin 
failed  to  carry  out,  may  yet  be  completed  by  one 
or  another  of  the  comedians  of  the  Theatre  Fran- 
fais;  and  even  before  it  is  finally  accomplisht 
for  Moliere,  it  may  be  undertaken  for  Shakspere. 
The  Shaksperian  traditions  are  as  many,  as 
varied  and  as  helpful;  and  they  are  now  kept 
alive  only  by  word  of  mouth,  descending  orally 
from  actor  to  actor  or  preserved  by  the  industry 
of  a  chance  stage-manager  in  the  flagrant  inse- 
curity of  an  unprinted  prompt-copy. 

When  Macready  retired  from  the  active  prac- 
tice of  his  profession,  George  Henry  Lewes  ex- 
prest  the  hope  that  the  actor  would  devote 
his  honorable  leisure  to  the  preparation  of  an 
edition  of  Shakspere,  in  which  there  should  be  due 
recognition  of  the  fact  that  Shakspere  was  as  great 
103 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

as  a  playwright  as  he  was  as  a  poet.  The  actor 
did  not  accept  the  invitation  of  the  critic;  and 
even  if  he  had,  we  may  doubt  whether  he  would 
have  condescended  to  record  all  the  many  tradi- 
tions of  the  theater,  some  of  which  he  himself  de- 
vised, while  others  he  inherited  from  John  Kem- 
ble  and  Edmund  Kean,  to  pass  along  to  Edwin 
Booth  and  Henry  Irving.  Sometimes  a  con- 
temporary criticism  has  recorded  for  us  the  name 
of  the  actor  whose  ingenuity  was  responsible  for 
a  striking  effect  developt  out  of  the  unadorned 
dialog  and  yet  not  discovered  by  any  of  his  prede- 
cessors in  the  part;  and  sometimes  the  customary 
business  is  so  old  that  its  origin  must  be  ascribed 
to  a  time  whereof  the  memory  of  man  runneth 
not  to  the  contrary. 

While  it  is  always  interesting  to  know  the  name 
of  the  performer  who  first  enricht  the  text  with 
a  felicitous  accompaniment  of  pause  and  em- 
phasis, glance  and  gesture,  what  is  really  impor- 
tant to  remember  is  that  there  is  no  single  scene 
in  any  one  of  the  more  frequently  acted  comedies 
and  tragedies  which  has  not  thus  been  made  more 
pictorial  and  thereby  more  dramatic  in  the  eyes 
of  the  actual  spectators.  Every  edition  pre- 
serves for  us  the  words  uttered  by  Othello  and 
I  ago  in  the  marvelously  built  up  crescendo  when 
I  ago  distills  the  poison  of  jealousy  drop  by  drop 
until  Othello  writhes  in  his  overwhelming  agony. 
But  how  did  lago  deliver  his  corroding  insinua- 
104 


SHAKSPERIAN    STAGE-TRADITIONS 

tions?  How  did  Othello  listen  to  them?  Were 
they  standing  or  sitting?  What  was  the  arrange- 
ment of  the  room?  How  was  the  mounting  ac- 
tion intensified  by  looks  and  movements?  How 
did  the  two  actors  play  into  each  other's  hands  to 
achieve  the  ultimate  peak  and  summit  to  which 
all  that  went  before  had  tended  irresistibly? 
These  things  we  do  not  find  in  any  existing  edition. 
It  is  idle  to  say  that  these  things  are  relatively 
unimportant  and  that  we  have  Shakspere's 
words,  which  ought  to  suffice.  Shakspere  wrote 
his  words  specifically  for  actors,  and  for  the  inter- 
pretation and  embellishment  which  only  actors 
can  give;  and  his  words  demand  this  interpre- 
tation and  embellishment  before  they  surrender 
their  full  content  or  disclose  their  ultimate  po- 
tency. No  commentary  on  Hamlet,  of  all  the 
countless  hundreds  that  have  been  written, 
would  be  a  more  useful  aid  to  a  larger  under- 
standing of  his  character  than  a  detailed  record 
of  the  readings,  the  gestures,  the  business  em- 
ployed in  the  successive  performances  of  the  part 
by  Burbage  and  by  Betterton,  by  Garrick  and 
by  Kemble,  by  Macready  and  by  Forrest,  by 
Booth  and  by  Irving.  It  is  not  that  any  one  of 
these  renowned  actors  is  necessarily  superior  in 
critical  acumen  to  the  more  intellectual  of  the 
commentators;  it  is  that  they  have  been  com- 
pelled by  their  professional  training  to  acquire  an 
insight  into  this  character  composed  specifically 
105 


THE   PRINCIPLES  OF   PLAYMAKING 

S 

for  their  use — an  insight  to  be  attained  only  in 
the  theater  itself  and  hopelessly  unattainable  in 
the  library  even  by  the  most  scholarly  or  by 
the  most  brilliant  expositor. 

II 

Outside  of  her  profession  Mrs.  Siddons  was 
only  an  ordinary  mortal;  and  the  essay  which  she 
wrote  on  the  character  of  Lady  Macbeth  is  quite 
negligible.  But  inside  of  her  profession  she  was 
a  genius,  gifted  with  an  interpreting  imagina- 
tion by  means  of  which  she  projected  a  more 
commanding  and  more  sinister  figure  than  had 
ever  been  suspected  to  be  latent  in  the  relatively 
few  speeches  of  the  comparatively  brief  part  of 
Lady  Macbeth.  Mrs.  Siddons  created  the  char- 
acter anew;  she  made  it  more  dominating  than 
it  had  ever  been  before;  and  in  so  doing  she 
seems  to  have  carried  Shakspere's  intentions  to 
a  point  which  he  could  not  have  foreseen.  When 
we  survey  the  tragedy  as  a  whole,  we  perceive 
that  the  dramatist  spent  his  main  effort  on 
Macbeth  himself,  on  the  hero-villain  who  begins 
and  ends  the  play,  and  that  the  heroine-villain 
is  only  an  accessory  character,  marvelously  sig- 
nificant, no  doubt,  but  nevertheless  subordinate. 
In  writing  the  words  of  Macbeth,  so  Fleeming 
Jenkin  finely  suggested,  Shakspere  "cannot  have 
had  present  to  his  mind  all  the  gestures  and  ex- 
io6 


SHAKSPERIAN    STAGE-TRADITIONS 

pressions  of  Lady  Macbeth  as  she  listened,"  and 
yet  this  by-play  of  Mrs.  Siddons  "was  such  that 
the  audience,  looking  at  her,  forgot  to  listen  to 
Macbeth."  What  Shakspere  supplied  was  a 
mightily  etcht  outline  for  the  performer  of  the 
part  to  color  superbly;  and  Shakspere  is  a  mas- 
terly playwright  partly  because  his  plays  ever 
abound  in  opportunities  to  be  improved  by  the 
insight  of  inspired  actors. 

Fleeming  Jenkin  was  not  relying  solely  upon 
the  casual  discussion  of  Mrs.  Siddons'  acting  pre- 
served in  contemporary  criticisms;  he  was  sup- 
ported by  the  detailed  record  of  her  readings, 
her  intonations,  her  pauses,  her  glances,  her 
gestures  and  her  movements  made  by  a  compe- 
tent observer.  Professor  G.  J.  Bell,  who  annotated 
the  text  as  he  followed  her  performances  night 
after  night.  And  Professor  Bell  added  to  this 
invaluable  account  of  what  the  great  actress  did 
in  this  great  part,  a  summary  of  the  total  impres- 
sion made  by  her  in  the  tragedy: — "Of  Lady  Mac- 
beth there  is  not  a  great  deal  in  the  play,  but 
the  wonderful  genius  of  Mrs.  Siddons  makes  it 
the  whole.  .  .  .  Her  turbulent  and  inhuman 
strength  of  spirit  does  all.  She  turns  Macbeth 
to  her  purpose,  makes  him  her  mere  instrument, 
guides,  directs  and  inspires  the  whole  plot.  Like 
Macbeth's  evil  genius  she  hurries  him  on  in  the 
mad  career  of  ambition  and  cruelty  from  which 
his  nature  would  have  shrunk."  Possibly  Shak- 
107 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

spere  meant  this;  certainly  he  suppHed  the  ma- 
terial for  it;  but  it  was  the  actress  who  brought 
out  all  the  hidden  possibilities  of  the  character 
to  an  extent  that  the  poet  could  scarcely  have 
anticipated. 

Professor  Bell  declared  that  when  she  was  im- 
personating Lady  Macbeth,  Mrs.  Siddons  was 
"not  before  an  audience;  her  mind  wrought  up 
in  high  conception  of  her  part,  her  eye  never 
wandering,  never  for  a  moment  idle,  passion  and 
sentiment  continually  betraying  themselves.  Her 
words  are  the  accompaniments  of  her  thoughts, 
scarcely  necessary,  you  would  imagine,  to  the 
expression,  but  highly  raising  it,  and  giving  the 
full  force  of  poetical  effect." 

This  record  of  Mrs.  Siddons'  Lady  Macbeth  is 
testimony  to  the  truth  of  one  striking  passage  in 
the  illuminating  paper  which  Fleeming  Jenkin 
prepared  to  accompany  it.  The  words  uttered 
by  any  one  of  Shakspere's  chief  characters,  so  the 
critic  asserted,  "do  not  by  themselves  supply  the 
actor  with  one-hundredth  part  of  the  actions  he 
has  to  perform.  Every  single  word  has  to  be 
spoken  with  just  intonation  and  emphasis,  while 
not  a  single  intonation  or  emphasis  is  indicated  by 
the  printed  copy.  The  actor  must  find  the 
expression  of  face,  the  attitude  of  body,  the 
action  of  the  limbs,  the  pauses,  the  hurries — the 
life,  in  fact.  There  is  no  logical  process  by  which 
all  these  things  can  be  evolved  out  of  the  mere 
io8 


SHAKSPERIAN    STAGE-TRADITIONS 

words  of  a  part.  The  actor  must  go  direct  to  na- 
ture and  his  own  heart  for  the  tones  and  the 
action  by  which  he  is  to  move  his  audience;  these 
his  author  cannot  give  him,  and  in  creating  these, 
if  he  be  a  great  actor,  his  art  is  supremely  great." 
Here  Fleeming  Jenkin  is  putting  into  other  words 
the  almost  contemporary  assertion  of  Coquelin 
that  "there  are  but  few  masterpieces  so  perfect 
that  the  actor  cannot  find  something  to  add  to 
them."  And  all  that  the  supremely  great  actors 
can  imagine  to  move  an  audience,  the  printed 
dialog  is  devoid  of;  and  the  mere  reader  in  the 
library  cannot  restore  it  unless  he  has  earlier  been 
a  spectator  in  the  theater  itself. 

Ill 

Just  as  Regnier's  'TartuflFe  des  Comediens'  af- 
forded a  model  for  the  editing  of  Moliere,  so  we 
have  in  English  at  least  one  attempt  to  supply  an 
edition  of  a  Shaksperian  play  as  it  was  interpreted 
by  the  genius  of  a  great  actor.  This  is  E.  T.  Ma- 
son's record  of  Salvini's  Othello,  in  which  we 
find  all  that  the  fortunate  spectators  of  that 
massive  performance  need  when  they  become 
readers  and  when  they  endeavor  to  supply  men- 
tally the  tones  and  the  gestures  with  which  the 
Italian  actor  illuminated  the  English  tragedy. 
Mr.  Mason  gave  us  portraits  of  the  actor  cos- 
tumed for  the  part ;  and  he  supplied  descriptions 
109 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

and  diagrams  of  all  the  stage-sets  used  by  Salvini. 
He  set  down  the  tragedian's  readings,  his  glances 
and  his  gestures,  and  his  movements  about  the 
stage;  and  so  complete  is  this  record  that  a  lonely 
student  who  had  never  been  able  to  see  Othello 
performed  would  get  from  it  a  fuller  disclosure  of 
the  essential  energy  of  the  tragedy  than  he  could 
possibly  have  had  before. 

It  is  true  that  the  lonely  student  might  have 
been  aided  in  the  eflfect  to  evoke  in  his  mind's 
eye  an  imagined  performance  by  a  collection 
and  a  comparison  of  contemporary  criticisms  of 
actual  performances  by  Edmund  Kean,  by  Ma- 
cready  and  by  Edwin  Booth;  and  he  would  find 
especially  helpful  Lewes'  noble  tribute  to  Sal- 
vini's  tremendous  exhibition  of  power  at  the 
highest  point  of  the  wonderfully  wrought  scene 
in  which  lago  unchains  the  demon  of  jealousy  in 
Othello.  "  But  the  whole  house  was  swept 
along  by  the  intense  and  finely  graduated  cul- 
mination of  passion  in  the  outburst,  'Villain,  be 
sure  you  prove'  when  seizing  lago  and  shaking 
him  as  a  lion  might  shake  a  wolf,  he  finishes  by 
flinging  him  on  the  ground,  raises  his  foot  to 
trample  on  the  wretch — and  then  a  sudden  re- 
vulsion of  feeling  checks  the  brutality  of  the 
act,  the  gentleman  masters  the  animal,  and  with 
mingled  remorse  and  disgust  he  stretches  forth 
a  hand  to  raise  him  up." 

Yet  eloquent  as  this  passage  is,  it  is  not  so 


SHAKSPERIAN    STAGE-TRADITIONS 

useful  to  the  lonely  student  as  Mr.  Mason's  mi- 
nute account  of  all  that  was  done  in  the  course 
of  the  entire  act  of  which  this  was  the  climax. 
Helpful  also  are  the  invaluable  notes  on  his  own 
procedure  when  acting  Othello  or  lago  contrib- 
uted by  Edwin  Booth  to  the  volume  on  'Othello' 
in  Furness'  'Variorum  Edition.'  More  than  any 
preceding  editor  did  Furness  perceive  the  im- 
portance of  considering  the  actors'  specific  con- 
tribution to  an  adequate  understanding  of  Shak- 
spere's  merits  as  a  playwright;  and  therefore  all 
the  later  volumes  of  the  'Variorum'  are  enricht 
by  more  or  less  criticism  of  actual  performances, 
often  with  indication  of  readings  and  of  business. 
Here  and  there  also  in  the  ample  volumes  of  Wil- 
liam Winter's  'Shakspere  on  the  Stage'  we  find 
loving  record  of  the  manner  in  which  culminating 
moments  were  rendered  by  the  foremost  Shak- 
sperian  actors  and  actresses  of  the  past  half-cen- 
tury. For  example,  Winter  has  preserved  for 
us  the  interesting  fact  that  it  was  Adelaide  Neil- 
son  who  first  caused  Juliet  on  the  balcony  to  pluck 
the  flowers  from  her  breast  and  to  throw  them 
down  to  Romeo  with  an  apparently  unpre- 
meditated gesture  expressive  of  the  ecstasy  of  her 
overmastering  passion. 

Again  in  Clara   Morris'   account  of  her  ear- 
lier years  on  the  stage  she  credits  herself  with 
the  invention  of  an  intensification  of  the  dra- 
matic effect  in  the  final  act  of  'Othello,'    Al- 
III 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

tho  she  was  then  only  a  sHp  of  a  girl  she  was 
called  upon  to  impersonate  the  mature  Emilia. 
After  the  death  of  Desdemona  Emilia  gives  the 
alarm,  crying  aloud, 

Help  !     Help  !    Oh,  help  ! 

The  Moor  hath  killed  my  mistress  !  Murder ! 
Murder ! 
and  then  the  bell  tolls  a  general  alarm.  The 
young  actress  arranged  with  the  prompter  that 
the  bell  should  sound  immediately  after  her 
shriek  for 

Help !     Help ! 
After  this  first  stroke  she  raised  her  voice  and 
cried. 

Help !    Oh,  help ! 
whereupon  the  bell  rang  out  again  and  again. 
Instantly  she  resumed  her  outcry. 

The  Moor  hath  killed  my  mistress  ! 

And  then  the  bell  once  more  tolled  the  alarm. 
Finally  she  shriekt, 

Murder !  Murder ! 
and  the  tolling  was  repeated  until  Montano  and 
Gratiano  and  lago  rush  in.  Miss  Morris  is 
pleased  to  inform  us  that  the  result  of  this  novel 
punctuation  of  her  lines  by  the  brazen  tongue  of 
the  tocsin  was  to  make  her  voice  seem  to  combine 
with  the  clangor  and  to  soar  above  it. 

It  would  be  pleasant  to  know  whether  or  not 
the  late  William  F.  Owen  should  be  credited  with 
the  devising  of  the  felicitous  business  which  en- 

112 


SHAKSPERIAN    STAGE-TRADITIONS 

hanced  Falstaff's  reception  of  Prince  Hal's  ex- 
posure of  his  mendacity  in  the  matter  of  the  men 
in  buckram,  when  a  condensation  of  the  two  parts 
of  'Henry  IV'  was  produced  by  Robert  Taber 
and  JuHa  Marlowe.  After  Falstaff  has  told  his 
tale  the  Prince  and  Poins  corner  him.  The  scene 
represented  the  tavern  at  Eastcheap  with  its 
huge  fireplace  before  which  stood  a  spacious  arm- 
chair with  its  back  to  the  audience.  After 
Falstaff  had  met  the  Prince's  incredulity  with 
abuse,  he  cried,  "O  for  breath  to  utter  !"  and  then 
he  sank  into  the  chair,  sputtering  out  his  final  in- 
sults. Whereupon  the  Prince  explained  that: — 
"  We  two  saw  you  four  set  upon  four,  and  were 
masters  of  their  wealth.  Mark  now,  how  plain  a 
tale  shall  put  you  down." 

As  soon  as  Falstaflf  was  convinced  that  his  bluff 
was  about  to  be  called  he  shrank  into  the  chair 
and  the  back  of  his  head  was  no  longer  to  be  seen; 
so  the  Prince  stated  his  case  to  an  invisible  Fal- 
staff, ending  with  "What  trick?  what  device? 
what  starting  hole  cans't  thou  now  find  out,  to 
hide  thee  from  this  open  and  apparent  shame?" 
Then  Henry  paused  for  a  reply  and  it  was  so  long 
in  coming,  that  Poins  backed  up  the  Prince,  say- 
ing, "Come,  let's  hear,  Jack.  What  trick  hast 
thou  now?" 

Falstaff  out  of  sight  of  the  audience  had  twisted 
himself  about  in  the  chair  until  he  was  kneeling  on 
it ;  and  he  slowly  raised  his  face  above  its  back — 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

a  face  wreathed  with  smiles  and  ready  to  break 
into  triumphant  laughter,  as  at  last  he  was  ready 
with  his  retort:  "I  knew  ye — as  well  as  he  that 
made  ye !  Why,  hear  ye,  my  masters;  was  it  for 
me  to  kill  the  heir  apparent?  Should  I  turn 
upon  the  true   Prince?" 

Whether  this  business  was  Owen's  own,  or 
Robert  Taber's,  or  inherited  from  Samuel  Phelps,* 
it  is  excellent;  and  it  deserves  to  be  set  down  in 
the  margin  of  the  actor's  edition  of  the  play. 
And  there  are  countless  other  histrionic  accre- 
tions which  also  demand  to  be  preserved.  Valu- 
able as  are  Winter's  and  Booth's  and  Lewes' 
descriptions.  Bell's  record  of  Mrs.  Siddons  as 
Lady  Macbeth  and  Mason's  account  of  Salvini's 
Othello,  they  preserve  for  us  only  a  few  of  the 
greater  moments  of  a  few  of  the  greatest  plays  as 
performed  by  great  actors. 

We  want  more  than  this;  we  need  to  have  in 
black  and  white  the  whole  body  of  stage-tradition. 
We  ought  to  have  all  the  valuable  readings  and  all 
the  accessory  business  set-down  carefully  and  pre- 
served permanently,  for  if  these  things  are  al- 
lowed to  slip  from  the  memory  of  the  few  who  now 
know  them,  they  can  never  be  recovered.  It  may 
be  admitted  frankly  that  some  of  these  traditions 
are  incongruous  excrescences,  occasionally  foolish 
and  sometimes  oflFensive,  handed  down  thought- 

*  Sir  Johnston  Forbes-Robertson  tells  me  that  he  does 
not  recall  it  in  Phelps'  performance. 
114 


SHAKSPERIAN    STAGE-TRADITIONS 

lessly  from  a  time  when  the  essential  quahty  of 
Shakspere  was  less  highly  appreciated  than  it  is 
today.  There  is  no  reason  for  regret,  for  in- 
stance, that  the  Second  Gravedigger  in  'Hamlet' 
no  longer  delays  the  action  and  disturbs  the 
spirit  of  Ophelia's  burial  by  stripping  off  an  un- 
expected sequence  of  waistcoats  to  the  delight 
of  the  unthinking — a  clowning  device  which, 
oddly  enough,  is  also  traditional  at  the  end  of 
Moliere's  '  Precieuses  Ridicules,'  where  it  is  not 
out  of  place  since  it  is  there  quite  in  keeping  with 
the  tone  of  that  lively  little  comedy.  And  per- 
haps there  would  be  no  loss  if  Romeo  and  Mercutio 
ceased  to  bewilder  Peter  when  he  is  delivering  the 
invitations  by  a  succession  of  ironic  salutations, 
just  as  Gratiano  and  Bassanio  bewilder  Gobbo, — 
the  business  being  identical  in  both  plays  and 
having  no  warrant  in  the  text  of  either. 

These  may  be  dismist  as  unwarrantable  ob- 
trusions to  be  discarded  unhesitatingly;  but  to 
admit  this  is  not  to  discredit  the  utility  of  the 
traditions  in  general.  They  are  to  be  received 
as  precious  heirlooms,  a  legacy  to  the  present  and 
to  the  future,  from  the  finest  performers  and  from 
the  most  adroit  stage-managers  of  the  past,  a 
store  of  accumulated  devices  always  to  be  con- 
sidered carefully,  to  be  selected  from  judiciously 
and  to  be  cast  aside  only  after  mature  considera- 
tion. And,  first  of  all,  before  any  selection  can 
be  attempted,  these  traditions  need  all  of  them 
115 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

to  be  placed  on  record  for  what  they  are  worth. 
Moreover,  as  the  value  of  a  suggestion,  if  not  its 
validity,  is  due  in  part  at  least  to  the  reputation 
of  its  suggester,  the  record  ought  (in  so  far  as  this 
is  now  possible)  to  register  also  the  name  of  the 
originator  of  every  specific  piece  of  business  and 
of  every  illuminating  reading. 

IV 

John  Philip  Kemble,  for  example,  altho  a 
little  austere  and  chilly  as  an  actor,  was  a  most 
fertile  deviser  of  points;  and  it  is  believed  that 
some  of  the  most  striking  effects  made  by  Mrs. 
Siddons  were  due  to  the  inventiveness  of  her 
brother.  One  of  these,  and  one  of  the  most 
characteristic,  is  in  the  trial  scene  of  '  Henry 
VI 11.'  Queen  Katharine  comes  before  the  King 
and  the  two  cardinals,  Wolsey  and  Campeius, 
sitting  as  judges  of  the  legality  of  her  marriage 
to  Henry;  and  she  begins  by  an  appeal  to  her 
husband.  When  she  makes  an  end,  Wolsey, 
whom  she  knows  for  her  personal  enemy,  counters 
by  asserting  the  integrity  and  the  learning  of  the 
judges  of  the  case;  and  Campeius  very  courte- 
ously suggests  that  the  royal  session  proceed. 
Then  there  follow  these  two  speeches: 

Queen.  Lord  Cardinal, 

To  you  I  speak. 
IVolsey.      Your  pleasure,  madam. 

Ii6 


SHAKSPERIAN    STAGE-TRADITIONS 

But  there  are  two  cardinals  present  before  her, 
and  Campeius  has  just  spoken.  Why  then  should 
Wolsey  alone  answer  when  the  Queen  says. 

Lord  Cardinal,  to  you  1  speak  ? 

The  actress  can,  of  course,  suggest  a  sufficient 
reason  for  Wolsey's  taking  her  words  to  himself 
by  looking  at  him  when  she  begins:  yet  this  is 
barely  sufficient,  since  the  two  cardinals  are 
sitting  side  by  side  and  the  Queen  is  at  some  little 
distance.  When  Kemble  played  Wolsey  and  Mrs. 
Siddons  was  Queen  Katharine  this  is  how  the  brief 
dialog  was  managed.  At  the  end  of  Campeius' 
senterKe  or  two,  the  Queen  spoke. 

Lord  Cardinal, 
and  then  paused,  whereupon  Campeius  rose  and 
moved  a  little  toward  her,  evidently  believing  that 
she  was  about  to  answer  him.  As  he  approacht 
her  she  turned  from  him  impatiently,  so  Professor 
Bell  has  recorded,  immediately  making  a  sweet 
but  dignified  bow  of  apology.  "Then  to  Wolsey, 
turned  and  looking  from  him,  with  her  hand 
pointing  back  to  him,  in  a  voice  of  thunder. 

To  you  I  speak  ! 

The  effect  of  this  outburst  is  so  electric  that  it 
has  been  repeated  in  the  subsequent  revivals  of 
'  Henry  VI 1 1,'  as  I  can  testify  from  my  memory  of 
Charlotte  Cushman's  performance,  Modjeska's 
and  Ellen  Terry's;  and  in  so  arranging  it  Kemble 
made  a  permanent  contribution  to  the  staging 
of  Shakspere." 

117 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

As  much  cannot  be  said  for  an  infelicitous  in- 
vention of  Saraii-Bernhardt's  when  she  rashly 
ventured  to  exhibit  herself  as  Hamlet.  In  the 
interview  between  Hamlet  and  the  Queen  in  which 
he  speaks  daggers  but  uses  none,  he  bids  his 
mother  contrast  her  two  husbands: 

Look  here,  upon  this  picture  and  on  this. 

How  are  those  two  portraits  to  be  shown  to  the 
spectators?  or  are  they  to  be  shown  at  all? 
Henry  Irving  accepted  them  as  purely  imaginary, 
seen  only  in  the  mind's  eye;  and  so  did  Edwin 
Booth  sometimes,  altho  he  often  preferred 
to  wear  a  miniature  of  his  father,  pendant  from 
his  neck  so  that  he  might  compare  this  with  a 
miniature  of  his  uncle  which  his  mother  wore 
suspended  also  by  a  chain.  Fechter  tore  the 
miniature  of  his  uncle  from  the  Queen's  neck 
after  contrasting  it  with  a  painting  of  his  father 
hanging  on  the  wall.  Betterton  had  two  half- 
length  portraits  side  by  side  above  the  wainscot, 
Mme.  Sarah-Bernhardt  employed  a  pair  of  full- 
length  paintings,  framed  high  up  in  the  wood- 
work on  the  wall  facing  the  Queen  as  she  sat; 
and  when  the  young  Prince  expatiated  piously 
on  his  father's  qualities,  physical  and  moral,  the 
portrait  of  the  elder  Hamlet  suddenly  became 
transparent  and  thru  it  the  audience  beheld 
the  Ghost — a  trivial  spectacular  trick  which  im- 
mediately distracted  the  attention  of  the  specta- 
tors. 

Ii8 


SHAKSPERIAN    STAGE-TRADITIONS 

Irving's  suppression  of  visible  portraits  was 
perhaps  more  in  accord  with  the  spirit  of  the 
episode  (and  of  the  play  as  a  whole)  than  was 
Booth's  occasional  use  of  two  miniatures;  cer- 
tainly it  was  simpler.  And  yet  Irving  was  rarely 
as  simple  as  Booth.  The  American  tragedian 
was  wont  to  rely  boldly  on  his  mastery  of  the  art 
of  acting,  whereas  the  British  character-actor 
felt  it  advisable  to  support  his  impersonation 
by  every  possible  device  of  the  stage-manager. 
Irving  may  or  may  not  have  suspected  the  limita- 
tions of  his  accomplishment  as  an  actor,  whereas 
in  stage-management  his  supremacy  over  all  his 
contemporaries  was  indisputable.  He  was  in- 
cessantly fertile  and  unfailingly  dexterous  in  the 
discovery  of  novel  methods  for  vivifying  Shak- 
spere's  dialog.  For  the  scene  of  Jessica's  elope- 
ment in  the  'Merchant  of  Venice'  he  designed  a 
characteristic  Venetian  set — a  piazzetta  with 
Shylock's  house  on  the  right  and  with  a  bridge 
over  the  canal  which  crosses  the  stage.  Shylock 
bids  Jessica  lock  herself  in;  and  then  he  goes 
away  over  the  bridge  to  the  supper  to  which  he 
has  been  invited.  It  is  the  carnival  season;  and 
a  merry  band  of  maskers  revels  past  with  light 
laughter.  Then  Gratiano  comes  on;  and  a 
gondola  glides  up  from  which  Lorenzo  steps  out. 
They  hail  Jessica,  who  throws  to  them  out  of  the 
window  her  father's  casket  of  jewels  and  money, 
after  which  she  descends  and  unlocks  the  door,  and 
119 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

comes  out  in  boy's  apparel,  and  lets  her  lover  bear 
her  away  in  the  gondola.  Gratiano  remains  and 
exchanges  a  few  words  with  Antonio,  who  has 
chanced  by.  When  they  have  gone,  the  maskers 
gaily  flash  across  the  bridge  once  more;  and 
after  a  little  the  stage  is  left  empty.  Then  in  the 
distance  we  hear  the  tapping  of  Shylock's  staff, 
and  soon  we  see  him  crossing  the  bridge  to  stand 
at  last  knocking  at  the  door  of  his  now  robbed  and 
deserted  home.  It  is  only  when  he  has  knockt 
a  second  time  that  the  curtain  slowly  falls,  leav- 
ing us  to  imagine  for  ourselves  his  grief  and  his 
rage  when  he  finds  out  his  double  misfortune. 

Again  in  the  trial-scene,  after  Shylock  is  baf- 
fled and  despoiled,  he  asks  leave  to  go. 

1  am  not  well.  Send  the  deed  after  me,  and 
I  will  sign  it. 

Irving  made  his  exit  and  there  was  silence  for 
a  little  space,  suddenly  broken  by  the  angry  mur- 
murs of  the  mob  outside,  hooting  at  the  discom- 
fited usurer.  For  neither  of  these  effects  is  there 
any  warrant  in  Shakspere's  text;  the  first  was 
impossible  on  the  sceneless  stage  of  the  Globe 
theater,  and  the  second  was  too  subtle  for  the 
ruder  tastes  of  Tudor  audiences;  and  yet  both 
are  perfectly  in  keeping  with  the  temper  and  spirit 
of  the  play. 

It  is  to  be  noted,  however,  that  Irving  missed 
a  moving  dramatic  effect  in  allowing  Ellen  Terry 
to  declaim  the  lines  on  the  Quality  of  Mercy  in 


SHAKSPERIAN    STAGE-TRADITIONS 

accord  with  the  customary  delivery  of  that  ora- 
tion, treating  it  as  an  eloquent  opportunity  for 
triumphant  elocution.  Ada  Rehan  adjusted  the 
speech  more  artistically  to  the  situation;  Portia 
has  told  Shylock  that  he  must  be  merciful,  and  he 
has  scornfully  askt, 

On  what  compulsion  must  I  ? 

Whereupon  Portia  explains  to  him  the  blessings 
of  mercy — and  Ada  Rehan  then  spoke  the  speech 
as  a  summons  to  his  better  self,  addressing  herself 
directly  to  him,  evidently  inspired  by  the  hope 
that  her  plea  might  soften  his  heart  and  watching 
eagerly  to  discover  if  it  did.  Thus  treated  the 
beautiful  appeal  intensified  the  dramatic  poign- 
ancy of  the  moment;  and  thus  treated  it  seems 
to  be  more  completely  in  harmony  with  Shak- 
spere's  intent. 

Yet  there  is  danger  always  in  spending  undue 
effort  in  a  vain  attempt  to  discover  what  Shak- 
spere  or  any  other  dramatist  meant  to  do,  instead 
of  centering  our  attention  upon  what  he  actually 
did,  whatever  his  intent  may  have  been.  It  is 
highly  probable,  for  instance,  that  Shakspere 
intended  Shylock  to  be  a  despicable  villain  de- 
testable to  all  spectators;  but  what  Shakspere 
actually  did  was  to  create  an  indisputable  human 
being,  arousing  our  sympathy  at  the  very  time 
when  we  hold  him  in  horror.  Fanny  Kemble  saw 
Edmund  Kean  in  1827,  and  she  recorded  that  he 
"  entirely  divested  Shylock  of  all  poetry  or  eleva- 


THE    PRINCIPLES  OF   PLAYMAKING 

tion,  but  invested  it  with  a  concentrated  ferocity 
that  made  one's  blood  curdle/'  Quite  possibly  all 
that  Shakspere  intended  was  this  concentrated 
ferocity,  but  none  the  less  did  he  lend  poetry  and 
elevation  to  the  sinister  character.  Kean  may 
have  performed  Shylock  in  accord  with  Shak- 
spere's  intent;  but  Irving  and  Booth,  both  of 
them,  preferred  to  reveal  rather  the  poetry  and 
the  elevation  with  which  Shakspere  had  dowered 
the  character.  If  Shylock  has  poetry  and  eleva- 
tion, it  is  because  Shakspere  gave  them  to  him, 
even  if  he  knew  not  what  he  did;  and  it  is  always 
what  the  artist  actually  did,  and  not  merely  what 
he  meant  to  do,  which  we  need  to  perceive  clearly. 
Later  generations  read  into  a  masterpiece  of  art 
many  a  meaning  which  the  author  might  disclaim 
and  yet  which  may  be  contained  in  it,  none  the 
less,  because  the  great  artist  is  great  only  because 
he  has  "builded  better  than  he  knew,"  even  if  he 
left  latent  what  seem  to  us  patent.  A  wide 
gulf  yawns  between  us  and  our  Tudor  ancestors; 
and  in  the  centuries  that  separate  us  there  must 
have  been  many  changes  in  taste,  in  opinion  and 
in  prejudice.  To  the  stalwart  and  stout-stom- 
ached Elizabethans  Shylock  may  have  appeared 
as  one  kind  of  a  creature,  while  he  seems  to  us  a 
very  different  being,  more  human  mainly  because 
we  ourselves  are  more  humane.  Irving's  pathetic 
return  of  Shylock  to  his  abandoned  home  would 
have  been  hooted  by  the  groundlings  of  the  Globe; 


SHAKSPERIAN    STAGE-TRADITIONS 

and  yet  it  is  a  pictorial  embellishment  which  serves 
to  bring  out  the  Shylock  whom  we  watch  with 
commingled  abhorrence  and  sympathy,  even 
tho  Shakspere  might  himself  protest  that  sym- 
pathy should  not  be  wasted  on  his  sordid  serio- 
comic villain. 


In  its  time  Fechter's  Hamlet  was  the  cause  of 
a  plentiful  waste  of  ink,  let  loose  by  the  deliberate 
novelty  of  his  performance.  Fundamentally 
Fechter  was  an  emotional  rather  than  an  intel- 
lectual actor;  and  what  chiefly  interested  him  in 
the  tragedy  was  not  so  much  the  character  of 
Hamlet  as  the  swift  succession  of  striking  situa- 
tions. To  him  the  'Hamlet'  of  Shakspere  was 
like  the  'Ruy  Bias'  of  Victor  Hugo,  essentially 
a  melodrama  altho  adorned  with  exquisite 
poetry — and  there  is  this  much  to  be  said  for 
Fechter's  view,  that  we  can  still  catch  sight  of  the 
supporting  skeleton  of  the  coarser  tragedy-of- 
blood  which  Shakspere  endowed  with  the  hu- 
manity of  a  true  tragedy.  Where  English 
actors  had  been  a  little  inclined  to  see  an  embodi- 
ment of  philosophic  reflection,  sicklied  o'er  with 
the  pale  cast  of  thought,  the  French  actor  saw  a 
romantic  hero  entangled  in  a  complexity  of 
pathetic  situations;  and  what  interested  him  was 
rather  the  theatrical  effectiveness  of  these  situa- 
tions than  the  soul  of  the  hero  himself.  To  Fech- 
123 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF   PLAYMAKING 

ter,  Hamlet  was  a  picturesque  part  for  the  lead- 
ing man  of  the  Porte  Saint  Martin;  and  he  nat- 
urally treated  the  play  as  he  would  treat  any 
other  Porte  Saint  Martin  melodrama,  to  be 
made  as  emotionally  effective  as  might  be  and 
to  be  presented  as  pictorially  as  possible. 

As  Hamlet  was  a  Dane,  Fechter  presented 
him  as  a  blond,  adorning  his  head  with  locks  not 
exactly  flaxen  in  tint  but  rather  reddish.  (On 
this  point  doubt  is  not  possible  since  the  wig  that 
Fechter  used  to  wear  as  Hamlet  is  now  piously 
preserved  among  the  other  histrionic  memorabilia 
on  exhibition  in  the  club-house  of  The  Players 
in  New  York.)  Himself  a  sculptor  in  his  youth 
and  always  closely  associated  with  artists  pic- 
torial and  plastic,  Fechter  was  fertile  in  design- 
ing the  scenic  habiliment  of  the  plays  he  produced. 
A  large  part  of  the  action  of  'Hamlet'  was  made 
to  take  place  in  the  main  hall  of  the  castle  of 
Elsinore.  In  this  spacious  room  we  saw  the 
performance  of  the  'Mousetrap'  and  also  the 
fencing  match  of  the  final  act.  This  hall  filled 
the  stage;  it  had  broad  doors  at  the  back,  and 
above  this  portal  was  a  gallery  with  smaller  doors 
at  both  ends  leading  off  to  upper  rooms  and  with 
curving  stairways  descending  on  either  side. 
Many  of  the  exits  and  entrances  were  made  by 
means  of  one  or  another  of  these  stairways;  and 
Fechter  utilized  them  artfully  when  the  time  came 
for  the  killing  of  the  King.  The  throne  upon 
124 


SHAKSPERIAN    STAGE-TRADITIONS 

which  Claudius  sat  to  behold  the  fencing  was  on 
one  side.     Kate  Field's  record  of  the  business, 
in  her  biography  of  Fechter,  conforms  to  my  own 
recollection  of  it: — 
"The  moment  Hamlet  exclaimed 

Ho !  let  the  door  be  lockt. 
Treachery  !    Seek  it  out ! 

"the  King  exhibited  signs  of  fear;  and  while 
Laertes  made  his  terrible  confession,  the  regicide 
stole  to  the  opposite  stairs,  shielding  himself 
from  Hamlet's  observation  behind  a  group  of 
courtiers  who,  paralized  with  horror,  failed  to 
remark  the  action.  Laertes  no  sooner  uttered 
the  words 

The  King's  to  blame ! 

than  Hamlet  turned  suddenly  to  the  throne  in 
search  of  his  victim.  Discovering  the  ruse  he 
rushed  up  the  left-hand  stairs,  to  meet  the  King 
in  the  center  of  the  gallery  and  stabbed  him. 
"...  As  he  descended  the  stairs  the  potent 
poison  stole  upon  Hamlet,  who,  murmuring 

The  rest  is  silence ! 

fell  dead  upon  the  corpse  of  Laertes,  thus  show- 
ing his  forgiveness  of  treachery  and  remembrance 
of  Ophelia." 

125 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 
VI 

Mention  has  already  been  made  of  Ada 
Rehan's  method  of  delivering  the  appeal  to  Shy- 
lock's  better  nature  in  which  she  described  the 
quality  of  mercy.  In  default  of  evidence  1  cannot 
say  whether  her  attitude  was  derived  from  a  tradi- 
tion which  had  not  been  preserved  in  such  other 
performances  of  the  'Merchant  of  Venice'  as  I 
have  been  permitted  to  see,  or  whether  it  was 
assumed  for  the  first  time  in  Augustin  Daly's  last 
production  of  the  play.  Daly  was  a  producer — to 
use  the  term  now  accepted  in  the  theater — of 
singular  individuality,  familiar  with  accepted 
traditions,  and  yet  often  preferring  to  discard 
them  in  favor  of  novelties  of  his  devising.  On 
occasion  he  exhibited  a  wrongheadness  which  was 
almost  perverse  in  its  eccentricity;  but  far  more 
frequently  his  originality  manifested  itself  in 
unhackneyed  arrangements  which  set  familiar 
passages  in  a  new  light. 

Of  all  his  Shaksperian  revivals  the  'Taming  of 
the  Shrew'  was  perhaps  the  most  completely  satis- 
fying in  its  sumptuous  stage-setting  and  in  its 
intricate  stage-management,  yet  his  presentation 
of  'As  You  Like  It'  was  a  close  second.  As  he 
was  a  martinet  in  the  discipline  of  his  company, 
we  may  credit  to  him  rather  than  to  the  actor 
himself  a  new  departure  in  the  interpretation  of 
the  character  of  Jaques.  In  the  structure  of 
126 


SHAKSPERIAN   STAGE-TRADITIONS 

*As  You  Like  It'  Shakspere  closely  followed  the 
story  of  Lodge's  'Rosalynde';  yet  he  introduced 
several  figures  not  to  be  found  in  this  source. 
One  of  these  is  Jaques,  who  has  nothing  whatever 
to  do  with  the  plot  of  the  piece,  who  seems  to 
exist  for  his  own  sake,  and  who  is  allowed  to 
usurp  the  attention  of  the  audience  for  his  self- 
revelatory  harangues.  1  have  suggested  else- 
where that  possibly  Jaques  was  invented  for  the 
sole  purpose  of  providing  a  part  for  Burbage 
— a  part  rich  in  elocutionary  opportunities. 
Now,  what  manner  of  man  is  this  Jaques,  created 
to  disclose  himself  not  by  action  but  only  by 
discourse? 

Richard  Grant  White  maintained  "that  what 
Jaques  meant  by  melancholy  was  what  we  now 
call  cynicism — a  sullen,  scoffmg,  snarling  spirit." 
In  the  view  of  the  American  critic,  Jaques  "was 
one  of  those  men  who  believe  in  nothing  good, 
and  who  as  the  reason  of  their  lack  of  faith  in 
human  nature  and  of  hope  of  human  happiness, 
and  their  want  of  charity,  tell  us  that  they  have 
seen  the  world."    White  declared  that  in    de-    ' 
livering  the  speech  on  the  seven  ages  of  man,        J4 
Jaques  seizes  "the  occasion  to  sneer  at  the  repre-     -   4 
sentatives  of  the  whole  human  race."  .  -^ 

For  this  opinion  of  Jaques  the  critic  claimed         ] 

originality   for   himself,    asserting   that    it    was 

contrary  to  that  usually  shown  on   the  stage. 

Since  White  first  stated  it  in  1854,  it  has  succeeded 

127 


THE    PRINCIPLES  OF   PLAYMAKING 

in  acclimating  itself  in  the  theater,  where  Jaques 
has  frequently  been  presented  as  an  embittered 
despiser  of  mankind;  in  fact,  it  bids  fair  to  estab- 
lish itself  as  the  accepted  stage-tradition.  This 
reading  of  the  part  is  attractive  to  the  actor  of 
Jaques,  since  it  increases  the  wilful  perversity  of 
his  personality  and  makes  the  character  stand 
out  in  bold  relief,  his  malignity  contrasting  with 
the  kindliness  of  the  Duke  and  of  his  genial  com- 
panions in  the  forest. 

But  is  this  necessarily  the  right  reading  of  the 
part  ?  Is  there  ever  any  one  interpretation  of  the 
more  richly  rounded  characters  of  Shakspere's 
plays  which  we  must  accept  as  undeniably  the 
only  admissible  rendering?  in  his  more  ambi- 
tious figures  Shakspere  is  not  satisfied  to  give  us 
mere  outlines,  profiles,  silhouettes,  to  be  seen 
from  one  angle  only;  he  bestows  upon  them  the 
rotundity  of  real  life;  and  we  may  dispute 
about  them,  as  we  dispute  about  the  characters 
of  our  acquaintances  and  of  prominent  men  in 
public  life.  No  critic  may  feel  entitled  to  assert 
that  he  has  attained  to  a  final  decision  as  to  the 
exact  character  of  Hamlet  or  Shylock  or  Jaques; 
and  every  one  of  us  is  justified  in  defending  his 
own  opinion  as  to  these  creatures  of  imagination 
all  compact. 

Certainly  it  was  a  Jaques  very  unlike  White's 
that  Daly  showed  us  in  his  revival  of  'As  You 
Like  It.'  Daly  held  that  Jaques  is  a  humorist, 
128 


SHAKSPERIAN    STAGE-TRADITIONS 

recognized  as  such  by  all  his  comrades — a  humor- 
ist who  affects  to  be  a  satirist  and  who  is  not  to 
be  taken  too  seriously.  And  Jaques  himself  is 
quite  conscious  of  this  tolerant  and  amused  atti- 
tude of  his  fellows  toward  him  and  that  they  are 
always  expecting  him  to  take  antagonistic  views 
and  are  always  wondering  what  he  is  going  to 
say  next,  ever  ready  for  his  exaggerated  out- 
breaks and  ever  ready  to  laugh  with  him,  even  if 
they  are  also  laughing  at  him.  As  Jaques  is 
aware  of  their  expectation,  he  responds  to  it; 
he  gives  them  what  they  are  looking  for;  he 
abounds  in  his  own  sense;  he  looses  free  rein  to 
his  wit  and  to  his  whimsical  fantasy,  certain  that 
his  customary  hearers  will  know  that  there  is  no 
sting  to  his  satire.  Such  men  are  not  uncommon 
nowadays  in  real  life;  and  in  the  threatening 
monotony  of  our  modern  existence  they  are 
eagerly  welcomed  and  their  over-emphatic  utter- 
ances are  awaited  with  smiling  expectancy. 

It  was  thus  that  Daly  conceived  the  character 
of  Jaques  and  that  he  arranged  the  way  in  which 
the  other  actors  should  receive  the  outpourings 
of  the  self-conscious  humorist.  When  Orlando 
breaks  in  upon  the  feast  and  demands  food  for 
Adam,  the  Duke  bids  him  go  and  fetch  the  faith- 
ful old  servant.  The  interval  between  Orlando's 
departure  and  his  return  with  Adam  must  be 
filled  up  so  that  the  audience  may  not  be  forced 
to  feel  that  it  has  been  kept  waiting;  and  Shak- 
129 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

spere  drafts  Jaques  for  this  service.    After  Or- 
lando goes,  the  Duke  remarks  that 

We  are  not  all  alone  unhappy. 

This  wide  and  universal  theater 

Presents  more  woful  pageants  than  the  scene 

Wherein  we  play  in. 

Here  Jaques  sees  his  opportunity  and  declares 
that 

All  the  world's  a  stage, 

And  all  the  men  and  women  merely  players. 

Then  he  pauses,  to  observe  whether  this  meets 
with  approval;  and  the  others  smile  back,  as  if 
to  encourage  him  to  proceed.  Thus  heartened 
by  their  sympathetic  attention  he  takes  up  his 
parable  and  evolves  the  theory  of  the  seven  ages 
of  man.  He  is  not  reciting  a  set  speech,  prepared 
in  advance;  he  is  extemporizing,  sometimes 
hesitating  for  the  right  word,  and  always  acutely 
sensitive  to  the  effect  he  is  producing  upon  his 
listeners.  Thus  delivered  the  speech  is  robbed 
of  its  bitterness  and  emptied  of  its  cynicism. 
And  as  it  falls  from  the  lips  of  Jaques  its  hearers 
exchange  glances  in  recognition  of  the  fact  that 
their  humorous  friend  is  in  excellent  vein,  sur- 
passing himself  in  whimsical  exaggeration,  even 
if  he  ends,  as  humorists  are  wont  to  do,  upon  a 
note  of  melancholy. 

130 


SHAKSPERIAN    STAGE-TRADITIONS 

When  the  famihar  words  are  spoken  under 
these  conditions  they  have  a  freshness  which  is 
totally  absent  if  Jaques  declaims  them  as  part  of 
a  set  speech.  In  his  illuminating  address  on  the 
'Illusion  of  the  First  Time  in  Acting,'  William 
Gillette*  has  dwelt  on  the  danger  to  which  the 
drama  is  exposed  whenever  the  actor  carelessly 
reveals  himself  as  knowing  by  heart  the  words 
which  the  character  is  supposed  to  be  uttering 
without  premeditation.  There  is  always  a  temp- 
tation for  the  performer  to  see  in  the  Seven  Ages 
and  the  Quality  of  Mercy,  in  Hamlet's  soliloquy 
and  Mark  Antony's  appeal,  an  opportunity  for 
an  elocutionary  exhibition,  perhaps  effective 
enough  in  itself,  yet  damaging  to  the  total  effect 
of  the  play.  To  turn  every  one  of  these  speeches 
into  a  piece  to  be  spoken  may  not  be  fairly  de- 
scribed as  a  stage-tradition;  yet  the  practice  is  far 
too  prevalent  in  the  acting  of  Shakspere  to-day, 
and  it  is  probably  an  inheritance  from  the  past. 
There  would  be  a  stimulus  to  the  adoption  of  a 
better  method  if  the  actor's  edition  of  Shakspere 
should  record  the  various  devices  by  which  this 
danger  has  been  averted. 

In  this  paper  it  has  been  possible  to  adduce  only 

*It  may  be  noted  that  Gillette's  address  and  the  essays 
of  Coquelin  and  Fleeming  Jenkin,  from  which  quotation 
has  been  made  in  this  paper,  are  all  reprinted  in  the  Second 
Series  of  the  Publications  of  the  Dramatic  Museum  of 
Columbia  University  (19 15). 
131 


THE    PRINCIPLES    OF    PLAVMAKING 

a  few  of  the  many  instances  where  an  unexpected 
illumination  of  Shakspere's  text  has  been  accom- 
plisht  by  inventive  actors  and  by  ingenious 
stage-managers,  who  have  made  explicit  what 
they  believed  to  be  implicit  in  the  dialog.  Where 
they  found  only  the  seed  itself,  they  have  shown 
the  expanding  flower  potentially  contained  within 
it.  What  they  have  done  for  Shakspere  they  have 
done  for  Moliere  and  for  Sheridan;  and  this  is 
one  reason  why  the  accredited  classics  of  the 
drama  are  likely  to  seem  to  us,  when  we  see  them 
on  the  stage,  ampler  in  detail  and  solider  in  texture 
than  the  plays  of  our  own  time,  which  have  not  yet 
been  able  to  profit  by  the  contributions  of  genera- 
tion after  generation  of  actors  and  stage-managers. 
And  a  warm  welcome  awaits  the  editor  who  shall 
employ  the  most  significant  of  these  stage-tradi- 
tions to  vivify  the  text  of  his  edition  of  Shakspere. 

(1916.) 


132 


VH 
THE  PLEASANT  LAND  OF  SCRIBIA 


AS  we  look  down  the  long  history  of  dramatic 
L  literature  we  cannot  help  seeing  that  the  suc- 
cessful playwrights  may  be  assorted  into  different 
groups.  They  are  all  of  them,  of  course,  first  and 
foremost  playwrights — that  is  to  say,  they  all 
possess  the  innate  and  instinctive  gift  of  arous- 
ing and  of  retaining  the  interest  of  the  playgoers 
of  their  own  time  and  of  their  own  country. 
They  are  all  story-tellers  on  the  stage,  because  a 
play  needs  a  plot  above  all  else,  if  it  is  to  please 
long  and  to  please  many.  But  the  kind  of  story 
they  will  select  and  the  degree  of  importance 
they  will  give  to  the  story  itself  will  depend  on 
their  own  differing  attitude  toward  life  and  their 
own  special  qualifications. 

Some  successful  playwrights  are  poets,  essen- 
tially dramatic,  like  Sophocles  and  Shakspere, 
or  essentially  lyric  like  Rostand  and  d'Annunzio. 
Some  are  social  satirists,  like  Moliere  and  Beau- 
marchais.  Some  are  wits  like  Sheridan  or 
humorists  like  Labiche.  Some,  like  Ibsen,  are 
primarily  psychologists  creating  characters  to 
133 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

be  revealed  in  successive  situations;  and  some, 
like  Brieux,  are  sociologists  dealing  with  the 
problems  of  the  day.  Some  are  journalists,  as 
Aristophanes  was  on  occasion  and  as  Sardou  was 
in  his  earlier  comedies  of  contemporary  Paris. 
Some  are  preachers,  like  Bernard  Shaw.  And 
some  of  them  are  simply  story-tellers,  pure  and 
simple,  not  poets  or  psychologists  or  philosophers, 
not  humorists  or  journalists,  but  merely  con- 
cocters  of  plots,  so  adroitly  put  together  that  the 
acted  narratives  amuse  us  in  the  playhouse  and 
give  us  the  special  pleasure  to  be  found  only  in 
the  theater,  without  providing  us  with  the  added 
delight  which  we  derive  from  the  veracious  and 
significant  portrayal  of  men  and  women. 

Of  these  story-tellers  of  the  stage,  content  to 
be  story-tellers  only  and  satisfied  to  rely  on  the 
attraction  of  a  sequence  of  ingenious  situations 
artfully  articulated,  Scribe  is  the  chief.  He  is 
not  a  poet;  he  is  not  even  a  man  of  letters;  he 
does  not  make  us  think;  he  does  not  deposit  in 
our  memories  anything  worthy  of  remembrance. 
All  he  can  do  is  to  amuse  us  while  we  are  in  the 
playhouse  with  the  mechanical  dexterity  of  the 
story  he  is  setting  before  us  by  the  aid  of  all  the 
devices  of  the  theater.  He  is  a  story-teller  on 
the  stage  and  nothing  else;  but  he  is  one  of  the 
indisputable  masters  of  stage  story-telling.  His 
stories  may  be  empty,  arbitrary,  artificial;  but 
they  are  sufficient  unto  themselves.  He  is  suc- 
134 


THE    PLEASANT    LAND   OF    SCRIBIA 

cessful  in  achieving  all  that  he  is  ambitious  of 
attaining — the  entertainment  of  the  spectators, 
by  the  exhibition  of  his  surpassing  skill  in  in- 
venting and  in  combining  effective  situations. 

It  may  be  admitted  that  merely  as  a  crafts- 
man he  is  not  more  dexterous  than  certain  of  the 
greater  dramatists.  As  sheer  machinery  nothing 
of  his  is  better  in  its  kind  than  the  exposition  of 
'Othello'  or  of  'Tartuffe';  and  he  never  put 
together  a  plot  more  artistically  wrought  out 
than  those  of  'QEdipus  the  King'  or  of  'Ghosts.' 
But  Shakspere  and  Moliere,  Sophocles  and  Ibsen, 
while  they  reveal  themselves  as  the  most  accom- 
plisht  of  technicians,  are  not  content  to  be 
technicians  only  and  the  larger,  loftier  and  nobler 
qualities  of  their  dramas  are  so  abundantly  evi- 
dent that  few  of  us  ever  pay  attention  to  their 
marvelous  mastery  of  technic.  But  Scribe  was 
nothing  but  a  technician;  and  it  is  solely  by  his 
mastery  of  technic  that  he  maintained  himself 
in  the  theater  for  two  score  years. 

He  was  astonishingly  fertile;  and  his  produc- 
tivity was  exhibited  in  almost  every  department 
of  the  drama, — in  farce,  in  the  comedy  of  anec- 
dote, in  opera-comique,  in  grand  opera,  and  even 
in  librettos  for  the  ballet.  He  did  not  lay  his 
scenes  always  in  his  native  land,  whose  manners 
and  customs  he  could  not  help  knowing;  at  one 
time  or  another  he  ventured  to  manufacture 
plots  supposed  to  take  place  in  almost  every 
135 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

habitable  country  in  the  globe.  The  'Bataille 
de  Dames'  and  'Adrienne  Lecouvreur'  were 
stories  of  France;  but  the  action  of  the  'Dame 
Blanche'  took  place  in  Scotland,  that  of  'Fra 
Diavolo'  in  Italy,  that  of  'La  Juive'  in  Spain, 
that  of  'Le  Prophete'  in  Germany,  and  that  of 
'L'Africaine'  partly  in  Africa.  In  one  piece,  sug- 
gested by  Fenimore  Cooper's  'Lionel  Lincoln,' 
he  even  ventured  to  cross  the  western  ocean  and 
to  take  Boston  for  his  background. 

Sometimes,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Cooper  adapta- 
tion and  of  the  'Dumb  Girl  of  Portici'  he  had  to 
go  abroad  because  the  original  of  the  story  he 
was  setting  on  the  stage  was  foreign  and  could  not 
well  be  made  French,  And  sometimes,  on  the 
other  hand,  he  transported  his  tale  to  a  far  coun- 
try, to  a  land  other  than  his  own,  so  that  he  could 
attribute  to  it  the  manners  and  the  customs  and 
the  laws  which  he  needed  to  enable  him  to  im- 
mesh  the  puppets  of  his  plot  in  the  thrilling  situa- 
tions he  had  invented.  He  did  not  set  out  on 
these  travels  to  capture  the  local  color  of  the 
countries  he  might  visit,  as  Hugo  had  essayed  to 
do  in  'Hernani'  and  in  'Ruy  Bias.'  Scribe's 
local  color  was  always  sporadic  and  superficial. 
He  went  far  afield  in  order  to  profit  by  conditions 
different  from  those  familiar  to  French  playgoers; 
and  these  conditions  were  not  necessarily  those 
which  actually  obtained  in  the  foreign  parts  to 
which  he  exiled  the  personages  of  his  plays; 
136 


THE    PLEASANT    LAND   OF    SCRIBIA 

they  were  those  which  he  needed  to  bring  about 
the  events  he  was  devising.  Therefore  the 
manners  and  the  customs  and  the  laws  which 
we  find  in  many  of  the  stories  of  Scribe  set  before 
us  on  the  stage  are  not  really  those  of  Spain  or 
Italy,  of  England  or  Germany,  of  Africa  or 
America;  they  were  in  fact  almost  as  much 
Scribe's  own  invention  as  the  stories  themselves. 


II 

Scribe's  frequent  departures  from  the  facts  of 
history  and  of  geography  were  promptly  noted  by 
contemporary  critics  more  familiar  with  foreign 
lands  than  he  was;  and  they  accused  him  of 
having  imagined  a  country  of  his  own,  to  which 
they  gave  his  name — La  Scribie — Scribia — a 
very  useful  country  for  a  playwright  because  its 
social  conventions  existed  solely  for  the  play- 
wright's convenience  and  because  they  might 
be  modified  unceasingly  as  the  exigencies  of 
plot  making  demanded.  When  Andrew  Lang 
first  heard  of  this  fabled  domain,  he  was  moved 
to  the  composition  of  a  lyric,  which  he  called 
'  Partant  pour  la  Scribie/ 

A  pleasant  land  is  Scribie,  where 
The  light  comes  mostly  from  below, 

And  seems  a  sort  of  symbol  rare 
Of  things  at  large,  and  how  they  go. 
137 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

In  rooms  where  doors  are  everywhere 
And  cupboards  shelter  friend  and  foe. 

A  land  of  lovers  false  and  gay; 

A  land  where  people  dread  a  curse; 
A  land  of  letters  gone  astray. 

Or  intercepted,  which  is  worse; 
Where  weddings  false  fond  maids  betray. 

And  all  the  babes  are  changed  at  nurse. 

Oh,  happy  land,  where  things  come  right 
We,  of  the  world  where  things  go  ill; 

Where  lovers  love,  but  don't  unite; 
Where  no  one  finds  the  Missing  Will — 

Dominion  of  the  heart's  delight, 
Scribie,  we've  loved,  and  love  thee  still ! 

Unfortunately  the  lyrist  who  rimed  this  de- 
lectable description  had  allowed  himself  to  be 
deceived  by  a  traveler's  tale  rarely  to  be  relied 
upon.  The  land  for  which  he  has  here  exprest 
his  longing  is  not  the  true  Scribia,  as  this  is  ac- 
curately mapped  on  the  atlas  of  imaginary 
geography.  It  is  an  adjoining  territory  first  ex- 
plored by  Jerome  K.  Jerome  and  explained  in  his 
authoritative  book  of  travels,  entitled  'Stage- 
Land,  Curious  Habits  and  Customs  of  its  In- 
habitants.' Among  the  many  citizens  of  this 
peculiar  place  whom  Jerome  was  enterprizing 
138 


THE    PLEASANT    LAND   OF    SCRIBIA 

enough  to  interview,  were  the  Stage-Hero  and 
his  fit  mate,  the  Stage-Heroine,  the  Stage-Villain, 
and  the  Stage-Adventuress,  the  Stage-Detective 
and  the  Stage-Lawyer. 

Mr.  Jerome  was  able  to  accompany  his  analysis 
of  these  peculiar  personalities  by  an  account  of 
the  legislation  which  governs  their  conduct  and 
which  has  hitherto  been  unfamiliar  to  students 
of  comparative  jurisprudence.  It  appears  that 
in  Stage-Land,  when  a  man  dies,  without  leaving 
a  will,  then  all  his  property  goes  to  the  nearest 
villain.  But,  if  the  deceased  has  left  a  will, 
then  and  in  that  case,  all  his  property  goes  to  the 
person  who  can  get  possession  of  this  document. 
As  Jerome  fails  to  cite  any  decisions  in  support  of 
these  laws,  we  are  left  to  infer  that  they  are  statu- 
tory and  not  judge-made.  Yet  he  is  frank  to 
inform  us  that  he  has  not  been  able  to  ascertain 
the  fundamental  principles  of  the  jurisprudence 
of  Stage-Land,  since  "fresh  acts  and  clauses  and 
modifications  appear  to  be  introduced  for  each 
new  play";  and  here  we  discover  a  condition  of 
things  closely  resembling  that  which  obtains  in 
Scribia. 

Yet  Stage-Land  is  not  Scribia,  altho  their 
several  populations  are  apparently  descended 
from  the  same  stock.  It  is  in  Stage-Land  rather 
than  in  Scribia,  that  the  Missing  Will  always 
turns  up  in  the  nick  of  time  and  that  all  the  babes 
are  changed  at  nurse.  Nor  is  Scribia  identical, 
139 


THE    PRINCIPLES    OF    PLAYMAKING 

as  some  geographers  seem  to  have  believed,  with 
the  No  Man's  Land  in  which  dwelt  the  pale  per- 
sonages of  M.  Maeterlinck's  earlier  plays,  a 
shadowy  and  mysterious  realm  where  the  unsub- 
stantial 'Intruder'  finds  his  way  invisibly  into 
the  household  of  death  and  where  the  'Sightless* 
wander  aimlessly  and  hopelessly.  Still  less  is 
Scribia  to  be  confounded  with  two  other  coun- 
tries, Utopia  and  Altruria,  about  which  the  gazet- 
teers are  able  to  supply  us  only  with  pitiably  in- 
sufficient information.  There  is,  however,  a 
certain  plausibility  in  the  suggestion  that 
Scribia  has  for  its  capital  the  city  of  Weiss-nicht- 
wo  and  that  it  has  recently  rectified  its  frontiers 
by  annexing  the  contiguous  principality  of 
Zenda. 

When  Brunetiere  was  bringing  to  its  logical  con- 
clusion his  illuminating  series  of  lectures  on  the 
evolution  of  French  dramatic  literature,  he  took 
as  the  topics  for  his  final  talk  Scribe  and  Alfred  de 
Musset,  contemporary  and  unlike — Scribe  the 
craftsman  who  was  only  a  craftsman  thinking 
solely  of  the  theater  and  living  in  it  contentedly, 
and  Musset  the  lyrist,  careless  of  formal  structure 
and  regardless  of  the  narrowing  limitations  of  the 
playhouse.  Different  as  they  were  in  equipment 
and  in  aim,  both  of  them  were  wont  to  take  for 
the  scene  of  their  dissimilar  dramas,  emptily 
prosaic  in  the  one  case  and  in  the  other  abundantly 
poetic,  the  non-existent  country,  which  had  been 
140 


THE    PLEASANT    LAND    OF    SCRIBIA 

named  after  the  elder  of  them,  and  which  was  a 
land  of  fantasy  with  manners  and  laws  easy  to 
manipulate  according  to  the  necessities  of  the 
fables  they  had  taken  as  the  foundations  of  their 
pieces.  Brunetiere  did  not  call  Scribia  by  its 
name;  but  he  did  draw  the  attention  of  his  hearers 
to  the  ideal  Bavaria  of  Musset's  'Fantasio,'  the 
Italy  of  his  'Bettine/  the  Sicily  of  his  'Carmo- 
sine'  and  the  Hungary  of  his  'Barberine' — "all 
Shaksperian  lands,  if  I  may  so  call  them,  in 
which  characters  from  fairy-tales  undergo  their 
adventures  in  gardens  always  in  bloom  and  under 
skies  that  are  eternally  blue." 

Ill 

When  Brunetiere  ventured  to  suggest  that  the 
indeterminate  backgrounds  of  Musset's  ironic 
imaginations  might  be  called  Shaksperian,  he 
was  only  recognizing  the  obvious  fact  that  the 
French  lyrist,  alone  among  modern  dramatists, 
had  chosen  to  follow  in  the  footsteps  of  the 
author  of  'As  You  Like  It'  and  of  'Twelfth 
Night/  From  Shakspere  Musset  borrowed  the 
commingling  of  realistic  and  prosaic  characters 
with  characters  poetic  and  romanticized.  He 
arbitrarily  banisht  the  persons  who  people  his 
airy  fantasies  to  a  far  and  foreign  land  chiefly 
that  he  might  let  them  live  in  an  atmosphere  of 
remoteness  and  enable  them  to  escape  from  the 
141 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

limitations  and  the  rigors  of  commonplace  exist- 
ence in  contemporary  Paris.  So  Shakspere,  in 
order  tliat  an  unknown  distance  from  London 
might  lend  enchantment  to  the  view,  had  chosen 
to  domicile  the  grave  and  the  gay  characters  of 
his  romantic  comedies  in  a  Bohemia  which  is  a 
desert  country  by  the  sea  and  in  a  Forest  of 
Arden  where  glide  gilded  snakes  and  where  roam 
lions  with  udders  all  drawn  dry. 

No  doubt  Musset  scorned  Scribe  as  bitterly  as 
did  his  fellow  lyrist,  Heine;  and  he  was  almost  the 
only  French  dramatist  of  his  day  who  was  not 
tempted  to  emulate  the  tricky  dexterity  of  Scribe; 
but  none  the  less  do  we  find  many  of  his  creatures 
living  in  the  pleasant  land  of  Scribia — just  as 
many  of  Shakspere's  lighter  characters  had  re- 
sided in  the  same  strange  country  more  than  two 
centuries  earlier.  And  while  Musset  knew  about 
Scribe  even  if  he  might  detest  him  and  all  his 
works,  Shakspere  could  have  had  no  foreknowl- 
edge of  the  prolific  French  playmaker  whose  pro- 
ductivity was  to  manifest  itself  more  than  two 
centuries  after  that  of  the  English  dramatist 
had  ceased.  Still  it  is  difficult  to  deny  that  Shak- 
spere, who  may  never  have  set  foot  outside  of 
his  precious  isle  set  in  the  silver  sea,  had  let  his 
fancy  transport  him  to  a  territory  which  we  can 
now  recognize  as  the  Scribia  known  to  all  students 
of  the  French  dramatists  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. 

143 


THE   PLEASANT  LAND  OF   SCRIBIA 

It  is  not  from  any  actual  Verona  in  any  actual 
Italy,  but  from  a  town  of  the  same  name  in  the 
heart  of  Scribia,  that  two  gentlemen  departed 
one  after  another,  destined  to  show  once  more 
that  the  course  of  false  love  does  not  always 
run  smooth.  It  is  in  a  Scribian  and  not  in  an 
Italian  Venice,  where  dwelt  a  Jewish  usurer  who 
was  trickt  out  of  the  deadly  forfeit  set  down  in 
his  merry  bond  by  the  sharp  practice  of  a  quick- 
witted woman  triumphantly  passing  herself  off 
as  a  lawyer.  In  fact,  the  administration  of  jus- 
tice in  this  fabled  Venice  is  so  frankly  fantastic 
and  so  completely  contrary  to  all  the  precedents 
which  would  govern  the  courts  of  any  actual 
Venice,  that  we  find  ourselves  wondering  whether 
this  imagined  city  in  the  sea  is  situated  in  Scribia 
or  in  the  adjacent  realm  of  Stage-Land  explored 
and  described  by  Mr.  Jerome. 

Again  it  is  in  Scribia  and  not  in  Greece  that 
the  Athens  stood  whose  Duke  wooed  and  won 
the  Queen  of  the  Amazons,  while  the  British-born 
Bottom,  after  marvelous  misadventures  due  to 
the  malice  of  a  fairy  King,  made  ready  with  his 
mates  to  perform  a  lamentable  tragedy  at  the 
ducal  bridal  ceremony.  Where  except  upon  the 
coast  of  Scribia  could  we  find  the  Ephesus,  the 
laws  of  which  put  the  obtruding  stranger  imme- 
diately on  trial  for  his  life  and  the  magic  atmos- 
phere of  which  made  it  possible  for  twins  separated 
in  infancy  and  brought  up  in  widely  parted  places 
143 


THE    PRINCIPLES  OF   PLAYMAKING 

to  be  in  manhood  indistinguishable  one  from  the 
other  in  speech  and  even  in  costume  ?  And  where, 
except  off  the  coast  of  Scribia,  could  that  en- 
chanted isle  lie  which  was  full  of  disheartening 
noises  and  which  was  suddenly  invaded  by  a 
ship's  company  cast  up  by  the  sea  as  the  result 
of  an  artificial  tempest  raised  by  the  cunning  of 
a  royal  magician. 

Students  of  imaginary  geography,  aware  that 
Utopia  was  discovered  and  described  by  More 
in  1 516  and  that  the  earliest  tidings  from  Al- 
truria  were  brought  by  a  traveler  interviewed 
by  Howells  in  1894,  have  never  had  occasion  to 
question  the  discovery  of  Scribia  in  the  first  half 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  during  the  lifetime  of 
the  man  from  whom  it  took  its  name.  Yet  we 
can  now  perceive  that  this  pleasant  land  was  not 
unknown  to  Shakspere  in  the  first  half  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  and  that  he  profited  hugely 
by  his  information  as  to  its  manners,  its  customs 
and  its  laws,  finding  them  modifiable  to  suit  his 
convenience.     How  is  this  to  be  explained  ? 

After  long  meditation  over  all  the  peculiarities 
of  this  problem  I  am  emboldened  to  proffer  a 
solution,  suggested  by  the  notorious  fact  that 
history  is  prone  to  repeat  itself.  This  solution 
1  venture  to  submit  herewith  to  the  charitable 
judgment  of  experts  in  imaginary  geography. 
Altho  Scribia  has  been  a  densely  populated 
realm  since  a  time  whereof  the  memory  of  man 
144 


THE    PLEASANT   LAND   OF    SCRIBIA 

runneth  not  to  the  contrary,  and  altho  it  had 
been  visited  and  traverst  and  dwelt  in  by  many 
of  the  characters  of  Shakspere  and  a  Httle  later 
by  not  a  few  of  the  characters  of  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher,  for  some  inexplicable  reason  it  had 
failed  to  be  described  in  any  gazetteer  of  liter- 
ature; and  at  some  unknown  date  it  seems  to 
have  secluded  itself  and  forbidden  the  entry  of 
all  foreigners,  just  as  Japan  chose  to  shut  itself 
off  from  the  rest  of  the  world. 

After  long  scores  of  years  it  was  rediscovered 
by  Scribe,  colonized  by  his  characters,  reintro- 
duced into  the  community  of  nations  and  named 
anew.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  there  is  never 
any  hope  of  rectifying  an  error  in  geographic 
nomenclature;  and  as  this  western  continent 
will  continue  to  hear  the  name  not  of  Columbus, 
but  of  Americus  Vespucius,  so  to  the  end  of  time 
will  Scribia  commemorate  the  ingenious  industry 
of  Eugene  Scribe,  falsely  believed  to  be  its  original 
discoverer.  And  here,  to  companion  the  lilting 
lyric  of  Andrew  Lang  is  a  copy  of  verses  by 
Charles  Godfrey  Leland: 

Thru  years  of  toil,  Columbus 
Unto  our  New  World  came; 

But  a  charlatan  skipt  after. 
And  gave  that  world  his  name. 

All  day  in  street  and  market 
The  liar's  name  we  see; 
145 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF   PLAYMAKING 

Columbia  ! — sweet  and  seldom — 
Is  left  to  Poetry. 

And  the  names  bring  back  a  lesson 
Taught  to  the  world  in  youth — 

That  the  realm  of  Song  and  Beauty 
Is  the  only  home  of  Truth. 


(1918.) 


146 


VIII 
HAMLET'  WITH    HAMLET  LEFT  OUT* 


IN  the  flotsam  and  jetsam  of  theatrical  anecdote, 
derived  from  the  wreckage  of  forgotten  books 
of  histrionic  biography,  no  tale  is  more  familiar 
than  that  which  records  how  a  strolling  company 
playing  a  one-night  stand  and  unexpectedly 
maimed  by  the  illness  of  its  leading  actor,  ven- 
tured nevertheless  to  perform  the  play  it  had 
promised  with  a  modification  of  the  original 
advertisement  to  accord  with  the  unfortunate 
fact.  That  is  to  say,  the  company  declared  its 
intention  of  performing  "the  play  of  'Hamlet' — 
with  the  part  of  Hamlet  left  out." 

Despite  diligent  endeavor  I  have  not  been  able 
to  discover  where  or  when  this  fabled  performance 
was  believed  to  have  taken  place.  Still  less  suc- 
cessful have  I  been  in  my  search  for  one  of  the 
spectators  at  this  unique  representation  of  Shak- 
spere's  masterpiece.  It  would  be  both  pleasant 
and  profitable  if  only  a  single  survivor  of  the 

*This  paper  was  read  before  the  Modern  Language 
Association  of  America,  at  Columbia  University,  in 
December,  1914. 

147 


THE    PRINCIPLES    OF    PLAYMAKING 

audience  on  that  occasion  could  be  interrogated 
as  to  the  impression  produced  upon  him  by  the 
tragedy  thus  bereft  of  its  central  figure.  With 
Hamlet  himself  subtracted,  what -can  be  left? 
The  scene  in  which  Polonius  loads  his  son  with 
excellent  advice,  the  scene  of  Ophelia's  madness, 
and  the  scene  of  the  two  grave-diggers, — these 
would  remain  intact,  and  little  more.  The  rest 
is  silence. 

There  is  perhaps  no  other  play  of  Shakspere's 
(not  even  'Macbeth')  in  which  the  title-part  is  as 
integrally  related  to  almost  every  episode  of  the 
plot  as  it  is  in  'Hamlet.'  It  would  not  be  diffi- 
cult to  arrange  an  acting  edition  of  both  halves  of 
'Henry  IV  with  the  part  of  Henry  IV  left  out, 
for  we  should  still  have  Prince  Hal  and  FalstafF 
and  all  their  jovial  crew.  And  it  would  not  be 
impossible,  altho  the  feat  would  demand  the 
utmost  dramaturgic  dexterity,  to  prepare  a 
theatrically  effective  version  of  'Julius  Caesar' 
with  the  part  of  Julius  Caesar  left  out.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  not  a  few  critics  have  complained 
that  Julius  Caesar  does  not  bulk  big  enough  in  the 
tragedy  which  bears  his  name;  and  by  this  com- 
plaint these  critics  revealed  that  they  were  un- 
familiar with  the  custom  of  the  Tudor  theater 
which  prescribed  the  giving  of  the  name  of  the 
sovran  to  any  historical  play  dealing  with  his 
times,  even  if  he  himself  might  not  be  a  dominat- 
ing personality  in  its  story. 
148 


HAMLET     WITH    HAMLET   LEFT   OUT 

But  even  if  Julius  Caesar  and  Henry  IV  are 
not  the  most  important  or  the  most  interest- 
ing characters  in  the  plays  named  after  them, 
at  least  they  do  take  part  in  the  action  from  time 
to  time.  They  pass  across  the  stage  at  intervals 
and  are  seen  by  the  spectators.  Neither  Shak- 
spere  nor  any  other  Elizabethan  dramatist  ever 
dreamed  of  so  constructing  a  piece  as  to  center 
attention  on  an  important  and  interesting  char- 
acter who  should  not  be  brought  bodily  on  the 
stage.  The  Tudor  relish  for  the  concrete  was 
too  intense  for  the  playgoers  to  accept  etherial 
subtleties  of  this  sort;  and  the  playwright  him- 
self was  necessarily  the  contemporary  of  the  play- 
goers, sharing  in  their  simple  tastes  and  in  their 
bold  desires.  Even  the  frequent  ghosts  who 
stalk  thru  Shakspere's  tragedies  were  on  his 
stage  boldly  visible  specters,  white-sheeted  and 
gory-throated, — these  very  ghosts  which  a  stage- 
manager  today  delicately  suggests  by  ingenious 
scientific  devices  or  less  confidently  leaves  to  the 
imagination  of  the  spectators. 

It  is  curious  that  the  Elizabethan  audiences, 
perfectly  willing  to  imagine  scenery  at  the  will 
of  the  author,  demanded  to  see  every  character 
in  the  drama,  standing  on  the  stage  and  speaking 
for  himself,  whereas  the  spectators  of  today, 
insisting  upon  an  adequate  scenic  background  for 
every  episode  of  the  play  are  willing  enough  to 
imagine  a  character  who  never  appears  before 
149 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

their  eyes, — an  unseen  personage  who  may  in- 
deed be  more  important  and  more  interesting 
than  any  other  personage  who  actually  stands  in 
front  of  them  on  the  stage. 


II 

In  a  volume  of  one-act  plays  composed  by  a 
young  American  playwright,  George  Middleton, 
there  is  a  piece  called  'Their  Wife/  in  which  the 
most  significant  figure  is  that  of  the  woman  who 
has  been  the  wife  of  one  man  and  who  is  the  wife 
of  another.  The  only  two  characters  who  are 
seen  and  heard  by  the  audience  are  these  two 
husbands;  their  wife  does  not  appear;  and  yet 
she  is  the  heroine  of  the  play.  It  is  solely  because 
she  is  what  she  is  that  the  action  of  the  piece  is 
possible;  and  it  is  her  character  which  is  the  core 
of  the  situation  wherein  the  two  men  find  them- 
selves entangled.  We  do  not  see  her  in  the  flesh, 
but  the  dramatist  has  made  us  see  her  in  the 
spirit.  He  has  interpreted  her  thru  the  mouths 
of  the  two  men  who  have  loved  her  and  whom  she 
has  loved  in  turn.  She  is  the  most  clearly  de- 
picted person  in  the  play,  so  clearly  depicted, 
indeed,  that  the  spectator  realizes  her  for  what 
she  is.  Oddly  enough  a  little  later  or  a  little 
earlier  Mr.  George  Ade  had  made  use  of  exactly 
the  same  device  in  his  one-act  play  'Nettie,'  in. 
which  we  are  made  to  see  the  invisible  heroine 
150 


HAMLET     WITH    HAMLET    LEFT   OUT 

as  she  has  imprest  herself  on  three  of  her  "gentle- 
men-friends." Quite  possibly  an  average  unob- 
servant playgoer,  recalling  one  or  the  other  of 
these  plays  after  an  interval  of  a  month  or  two, 
could  discuss  its  heroine  so  oblivious  of  the  fact 
that  he  had  not  actually  seen  her,  that  he  might 
find  himself  endeavoring  vainly  to  remember 
the  name  of  the  actress  who  played  the  part. 

It  is  now  nearly  half-a-century  since  Sardou 
brought  out  one  of  the  cleverest  of  his  satiric 
comedies,  the  'Famille  Benoiton.'  It  dealt 
with  the  fortunes  of  a  family  in  the  second  decade 
of  the  Second  Empire,  with  its  gaudy  glitter  and 
with  its  gangrene  of  social  disintegration.  Mon- 
sieur and  Madame  Benoiton  have  sons  and 
daughters,  married,  marriageable,  and  not  yet 
ripe  for  matrimony.  All  the  members  of  the 
family  are  presented  to  us  in  turn,  singly  and 
together, — all  of  them  except  Madame  Benoiton. 
They  are  put  thru  their  paces  in  a  series  of  amus- 
ing scenes;  and  we  discover  slowly  that  the  family 
is  in  its  sorry  state,  largely  because  it  lacks  the 
guiding  hand  of  the  mother.  Madame  Benoiton 
is  never  at  home;  she  may  have  just  gone  out  or 
she  may  be  immediately  expected;  but  she  does 
not  appear  with  the  rest  of  the  family.  She  is 
a  woman  of  fashion,  or  she  aspires  so  to  be  con- 
sidered; and  her  "social  duties"  are  too  absorb- 
ing for  her  to  give  any  time  to  her  husband,  to 
her  sons  or  to  her  daughters. 
151 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

When  at  last  the  fifth  act  draws  to  its  con- 
clusion, with  the  reconciliation  of  the  eldest 
daughter  to  her  husband  and  with  the  engage- 
ment of  the  next  oldest  daughter  to  an  eligible 
bachelor,  there  is  the  sound  of  carriage-wheels 
and  a  ring  at  the  front  door.  The  youngest 
boy  looks  out  the  window,  cries  "Mamma  \"  and 
rushes  away  to  greet  her.  The  eligible  bachelor 
smiles  with  anticipatory  delight;  he  has  yet  to  be 
introduced  to  his  future  mother-in-law !  Then  the 
boy  returns  disappointed;  and  when  he  is  askt 
where  his  mother  is,  he  explains  that  she  has 
just  gone  out  again: — "She  had  forgotten  her 
parasol !" 

Here  again  quite  possibly  the  average  unob- 
servant playgoer,  recalling  the  play  after  an  in- 
terval, might  easily  fail  to  remember  that  he  had 
never  laid  eyes  on  Madame  Benoiton  herself, 
altho  it  was  because  she  was  what  she  was  that 
her  children  had  developed  into  the  characters 
set  before  us.  Quite  possibly  once  more  Sardou 
himself,  intent  only  upon  a  characteristically 
clever  theatrical  trick,  did  not  intend  or  even 
apprehend  the  full  significance  of  Madame 
Benoiton's  absence  from  the  home  which  it  was 
her  privilege  to  control.  Yet  his  technical  skill 
was  sufficient  to  impress  upon  us  a  clear  vision 
of  this  unseen  mother,  derelict  to  her  duty. 

It  deserves  to  be  recorded  also  that  in  Al- 
phonse  Daudet's  play  of  Provencal  life,  'L'Arle- 
152 


HAMLET     WITH   HAMLET   LEFT  OUT 

sienne/  the  woman  of  Aries,  who  is  the  cause  of 
the  fatal  catastrophe,  does  not  appear  before 
the  eyes  of  the  spectators. 


Ill 

It  may  not  be  strictly  accurate  to  say  that  in 
Ibsen's  '  Rosmersholm '  the  mainspring  of  the 
action  is  Beata,  Rosmer's  wife,  who  had  thrown 
herself  into  the  stream  some  time  before  the 
opening  scene  of  the  play.  In  fact,  such  an  asser- 
tion would  be  inexact,  since  it  is  the  scheming  of 
Rebecca  West  which  has  brought  about  Beata's 
suicide.  Yet  the  dead  Beata  is  as  determining 
a  figure  upon  the  action  of  'Rosmersholm'  as 
the  dead  Julius  Caesar  is  upon  that  part  of  the 
action  of  'Julius  Caesar'  which  follows  his  as- 
sassination. Here  again  it  is  because  Beata  was 
what  she  was  that  the  ambition  of  Rebecca  West 
to  take  her  place  came  so  near  to  fulfilment. 
And  it  is  with  marvelous  adroitness  that  Ibsen 
drops  the  hints  and  supplies  the  suggestions  here 
and  there  which  we  eagerly  piece  together  (much 
as  we  might  work  over  the  once  popular  puzzle- 
pictures)  until  at  last  we  are  enabled  to  make  out 
a  full-length  portrait  of  the  dead  and  gone  wife, 
whose  gentle  spirit  is  now  more  potent  over  the 
volitions  of  her  husband  and  of  the  woman  who 
aspires  to  be  her  successor  than  it  was  while 
she  was  yet  on  earth  to  mingle  with  them,  a 
153 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

pale  and  unobtrusive  figure.  It  is  the  influence 
emanating  from  Beata  which  really  inhibits 
Rebecca  from  the  accomplishment  of  her  intent 
to  marry  Beata's  widower. 

In  two  of  Sir  Arthur  Pinero's  plays  there  are 
also  dead  wives,  whose  personality  reaches  for- 
ward and  interferes  with  the  orderly  march  of 
events  after  their  departure  from  this  life.  In 
the  'Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray'  we  are  made  to 
feel  the  austere  chilliness  of  the  first  Mrs.  Tan- 
queray, her  cold-blooded  physical  asceticism, 
which  ultimately  drove  the  warm-blooded  wid- 
ower to  ask  the  equally  warm-blooded  Paula 
to  become  his  second  wife.  And  in  'His  House 
in  Order'  we  are  presented  with  a  second  wife 
tormented  by  the  saintly  reputation  of  the  first 
wife,  to  whose  memory  everything  is  sacrificed 
including  the  happiness  of  her  successor.  The 
culminating  moment  of  the  play  is  when  the  out- 
raged second  wife  discovers  that  this  saintly  rep- 
utation of  the  first  wife  was  usurpt,  since  the 
dead  woman  had  been  unfaithful.  It  must  be 
admitted  that  the  author  has  not  been  as  skilful 
or  at  least  not  as  successful  in  'His  House  in 
Order'  as  in  the  'Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray'  in 
creating  in  our  minds  a  distinct  impression  of  the 
unseen  woman  whose  dead  hand  clutches  the 
heart  of  the  action.  The  first  Mrs.  Tanqueray 
we  can  reconstruct  sharply  enough.  But  the 
first  wife  of  the  man  whose  house  is  not  in  order 
154 


HAMLET     WITH    HAMLET    LEFT  OUT 

remains  a  rather  unsatisfactory  shadow,  since 
it  is  a  Httle  difficult  for  us  to  perceive  exactly 
how  it  was  that  a  woman  of  her  indefensible  char- 
acter should  have  been  able  to  pass  as  a  woman 
of  her  indisputable  reputation. 

IV 

In  these  two  plays  by  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  as  well 
as  in  the  'Rosmersholm'  of  Ibsen,  dead  women 
still  influence  the  lives  of  living  men;  even  tho 
they  are  dead  when  the  several  plays  begin,  they 
had  each  of  them  been  alive  only  a  little  while 
earlier,  a  few  months  or  a  few  years.  In  one  of 
Maeterlinck's  somber  pieces,  remote  from  the 
realities  and  the  trivialities  of  everyday  existence, 
there  is  also  a  personage  unseen  by  the  spectators, 
a  personage  not  dead,  since  he  never  had  been 
alive  in  the  flesh. 

In  the  'Intruder,'  Maeterlinck  invites  us  to 
behold  a  dim  hall  in  which  a  waiting  family  is 
gathered,  grandfather,  father,  daughters,  chil- 
dren— all  but  the  mother  who  lies  in  the  adjoin- 
ing room,  desperately  ill  and  hovering  between 
life  and  death.  The  conversation  between  the 
different  members  of  the  family  is  subdued  and 
almost  in  whispers.  The  blind  grandfather  hears 
a  step  in  the  garden  outside; — but  nobody  has 
come  to  the  gate.  A  moment  later  he  hears  the 
click  of  the  latch  of  the  gate,  as  if  it  had  opened 
155 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

and  shut; — but  nobody  has  past  thru.  Then 
the  old  man  asks  who  has  entered  the  room: — 
but  nobody  has  been  seen  to  come  in.  And  as 
query  follows  query,  the  spectators  begin  to 
suspect  that  the  senses  of  the  blind  man  are  super- 
normally  acute  and  that  he  is  conscious  of  hap- 
penings which  the  others  fail  to  perceive.  The 
dialog  is  as  tense  as  it  is  terse;  it  is  all  in  ques- 
tion and  answer;  it  abounds  in  seemingly  un- 
meaning repetition  which  the  audience  feels 
somehow  to  be  strangely  significant.  There  is 
an  almost  breathless  suspense  while  we  wonder 
whether  or  not  there  is  an  invisible  visitor  and 
while  we  ask  ourselves  who  this  unseen  newcomer 
can  be.  Finally  the  door  of  the  sick  room 
opens  and  the  sister  of  charity,  who  has  been 
in  attendance  on  the  ailing  mother,  is  seen  stand- 
ing silent  with  hands  crost  over  her  breast.  Then 
at  last  we  know  with  certainty  that  there  was  a 
mysterious  visitor  and  that  he  was  no  less  a 
person  than  Death  himself. 

Of  all  Maeterlinck's  dramas  the  'Intruder' 
is  perhaps  the  simplest  in  its  story  as  it  is  the 
strongest  in  its  effect.  And  the  means  whereby 
this  effect  is  achieved  are  seemingly  as  simple  as 
the  story  itself.  But  altho  the  dramatist  has 
wisely  chosen  a  primitive  and  elementary  form, 
he  reveals  his  possession  of  the  power  to  excite 
the  imagination  and  to  make  the  spectators  in- 
terpret for  themselves  what  he  had  refrained  from 
156 


HAMLET     WITH   HAMLET   LEFT  OUT 

bringing  before  their  eyes.  Often  in  poetry  we 
discover  that  the  part  is  greater  than  the  whole; 
and  in  the  'Intruder'  we  perceive  that  the  poet 
has  so  toucht  the  chords  of  our  sensibiHties  that 
we  attain  to  a  vision  of  the  whole,  altho  no  part 
has  actually  been  before  our  eyes.  Here  is  a 
case  where  M.  Maeterlinck  was  happily  inspired, 
lighting  on  a  topic  which  responded  sympathetic- 
ally to  his  etheriality  of  treatment.  In  the  in- 
tangible means  whereby  an  indefinable  mood  is 
evoked  and  sustained,  there  is  nothing  in  modern 
literature  comparable  with  the  'Intruder' — 
except,  it  may  be,  the  'Fall  of  the  House  of 
Usher,'  where  we  find  the  same  haunting  and 
insistent  melancholy,  the  same  twilight  paleness, 
the  same  dread  advance  of  we  know  not  what. 


The  'Intruder'  differs  from  the  several  plays 
in  which  there  is  an  absent  character  in  that  even 
the  most  careless  and  oblivious  spectator  must 
recall  the  fact  that  the  grisly  invader  was  not 
seen  by  anyone  either  in  the  auditorium  or  on 
the  stage.  In  this  play  we  have  no  true  parallel 
to  'Hamlet'  with  the  part  of  Hamlet  left  out  be- 
cause we  have  been  made  to  feel  that  Death  has 
actually  past  before  us  even  if  our  eyes  have 
proved  too  feeble  to  perceive  him.  He  is  a  thing 
unseen;  yet  the  accumulated  evidence  is  too 
157 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

convincing  for  us  to  dream  of  denying  his  actual 
presence.  There  is,  however,  another  French 
play  in  which  a  character  actually  alive,  altho 
far  distant,  is  the  motive  force  of  the  action  of  a 
play  wherein  he  has  not  appeared  and  in  which 
his  name  is  only  casually  mentioned. 

This  is  the  'Death  of  the  Duke  of  Enghien' 
by  Leon  Hennique,  a  brief  tragedy  in  three  swift 
episodes.  In  the  first  we  are  shown  the  head- 
quarters of  the  French  general  in  command  at 
Strasburg;  and  to  him  an  officer  brings  orders 
for  a  raid  into  neutral  territory  to  capture  the 
Duke.  The  obedient  general  does  not  discuss 
or  dispute  this  command;  but  the  spectators 
feel  that  he  does  not  approve  it.  In  the  second 
part  we  see  the  Duke  at  Ettenheim,  in  the 
midst  of  his  little  court.  While  they  are  at  table, 
the  house  is  surrounded  by  the  French  cavalry. 
The  general  enters  and  arrests  the  Duke  by  the 
order  of  the  French  First  Consul.  In  the  third 
scene  we  behold  the  sitting  of  the  court-martial 
in  a  dilapidated  room  in  the  castle  of  Vincennes. 
There  are  no  witnesses  against  the  Duke,  no  in- 
criminating papers,  no  counsel  for  the  defense; 
yet  these  things  are  disregarded  without  com- 
ment. The  Duke  is  summoned  and  interrogated 
with  the  utmost  courtesy.  He  scorns  to  deny 
that  he  has  fought  against  the  Republic.  There- 
upon the  members  of  the  military  tribunal  with- 
draw to  deliberate — but  the  spectators  are  never 
158 


HAMLET     WITH   HAMLET   LEFT  OUT 

in  doubt  as  to  the  fatal  verdict.  In  time  the 
Duke  drops  off  to  sleep,  to  be  awakened  by  an 
officer  who  bids  him  summon  his  courage  and 
follow.  When  he  has  gone  the  audience  over- 
hears the  sentence  read  to  him  as  he  stands  in 
the  moat  below  the  open  window.  Then  comes 
the  order  to  fire,  and  with  the  rattle  of  musketry 
the  curtain  slowly  descends. 

Nothing  can  be  barer  than  the  dialog  of  this 
drama;  it  achieves  the  acme  of  directness;  and 
in  the  trial  scene  almost  every  word  is  derived 
from  the  official  report.  The  name  of  the  First 
Consul  is  not  brought  in;  and  yet  the  author 
has  made  the  spectators  feel  that  it  is  the  steel 
volition  of  Napoleon  which  commands  every 
movement  and  which  dictates  every  word.  It 
is  a  duel  to  the  death  between  the  two,  the  cap- 
tive whom  we  behold  and  the  implacable  usurper 
who  overrules  justice  to  destroy  a  man  he  wishes 
out  of  the  way.  It  is  a  duel  of  an  unarmed  man 
with  an  unseen  opponent,  for  the  final  thrust  of 
whose  long  rapier  there  is  no  possible  parry. 
Napoleon  pervades  the  whole  play  from  the  be- 
ginning to  the  end;  he  is  the  hero-villain;  his 
iron  will  is  the  mainspring  of  the  action;  and  we 
cannot  fail  to  feel  this  altho  he  never  comes  be- 
fore us  and  altho  no  one  dares  to  bring  in  his 
name. 

In  the  'Marion  Delorme'  of  Victor  Hugo  it  is 
the  inflexible  determination  of  Richelieu  which 
J  59 


THE    PRINCIPLES  OF    PLAYMAKING 

controls  the  action.  Altho  the  Cardinal  is  never 
seen,  yet  he  is  heard  to  utter  a  single  word, 
"No!"  from  behind  the  curtains  of  his  litter  as 
he  is  borne  across  the  stage  in  the  final  act. 
In  Hennique's  play  Napoleon  is  neither  seen  nor 
heard,  nor  is  his  name  bandied  about  as  is  Riche- 
lieu's in  Hugo's  drama.  Surely  here  at  last  is  a 
novelty  in  the  drama;  here  is  really  an  analog 
to  the  performance  of  'Hamlet'  with  the  part 
of  Hamlet  left  out.  Still  the  student  of  the 
stage  will  not  readily  admit  that  any  novelty  is 
possible  at  this  late  date  in  the  long  history  of 
the  theater;  and  with  no  very  great  difficulty 
he  can  recall  at  least  one  drama  in  which  there 
is  a  single  combat  between  a  character  whom  the 
spectators  can  see  and  sympathize  with  and  an 
unseen  personality  of  inflexible  determination. 
The  '  Death  of  the  Duke  of  Enghien'  is  compara- 
tively recent,  since  it  was  acted  in  Paris  in  the 
later  years  of  the  nineteenth  century;  and  yet 
it  was  anticipated  in  Athens  more  than  two  thou- 
sand years  ago  by  the  earliest  of  the  Greek 
dramatic  poets. 

In  the  'Prometheus  Bound'  of  /^schylus  the 
play  begins  with  the  rivetting  of  Prometheus  to 
the  rock  in  accord  with  the  command  of  Zeus, 
because  he  will  not  tell  what  the  god  wants  to 
know.  Zeus  is  determined  to  force  this  secret 
from  Prometheus;  and  Prometheus  is  equally 
firm  in  his  resolution  to  keep  it  to  himself,  no 
i6o 


HAMLET     WITH    HAMLET   LEFT  OUT 

matter  how  keen  the  torture  to  which  he  may  be 
condemned  or  how  prolonged  the  agony.  To 
Prometheus  chained  to  the  crags  of  the  Caucasus 
other  characters  come,  one  after  another,  some  to 
encourage  him  in  resistance  and  some  to  urge 
him  to  yield  since  resistance  is  ultimately  in  vain. 
Altho  Zeus  does  not  come  the  spectators  are  well 
aware  that  it  is  his  unbending  volition  which  is 
responsible  for  the  situation.  Prometheus  may 
vaunt  himself  to  be  the  master  of  his  fate  and 
captain  of  his  soul;  he  may  steel  his  will  to  with- 
stand every  outrage;  but  his  invisible  opponent 
has  a  long  arm  and  a  sharp  sword  in  his  hand. 
In  the  utilization  of  the  device  of  the  unseen  duel- 
list, the  obvious  difference  between  the  '  Death  of 
the  Duke  of  Enghien'  and  'Prometheus  Bound' 
lies  in  the  sublety  of  the  later  dramatist  whereby 
ne  gets  his  effect  without  even  allowing  any  of 
the  characters  to  allege  the  name  of  Napoleon, 
whereas  /Eschylus  causes  all  his  characters  to 
discuss  the  deeds  and  the  misdeeds  of  Zeus,  and 
he  permits  Prometheus  to  exhale  his  griefs 
against  the  hostile  god  as  often  as  occasion  oc- 
curs. There  is  this  further  difference  also, 
that  M.  Hennique  is  a  sophisticated  Parisian 
who  was  deliberately  achieving  his  effect  by 
conscious  art,  whereas  /Eschylus  was  a  reverent 
spirit  not  condescending  to  artistic  subtleties  of 
this  sort,  even  if  they  had  been  possible  in  the 
primitive  conditions  of  the  Attic  theater,  when 

i6l 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

tragedies  were  presented  before  ten  thousand 
spectators  sitting  or  standing,  tier  on  tier,  on  the 
curving  hillside  of  the  Acropolis. 

(1914.) 


162 


IX 

SITUATIONS  WANTED 

I 

IN  a  forgotten  book  by  a  forgotten  British  bard, 
in  the  'Gillot  and  Goosequill'  of  Henry  S. 
Leigh,  we  may  read  the  appeaHng  plaint  of  a  play- 
wright who  felt  that  his  invention  was  failing 
and  who  could  no  longer  find  the  succession  of 
poignant  episodes  that  the  drama  demands: — 

Ten  years  I've  workt  my  busy  brain 

In  drama  for  the  million; 
I  don't  aspire  to  Drury  Lane, 

Nor  stoop  to  the  Pavilion. 
I've  sought  materials  low  and  high 

To  edify  the  nation; 
At  last  the  fount  is  running  dry — 

I  want  a  situation. 

I've  known  the  day  when  wicked  earls 

Who  made  improper  offers 
To  strictly  proper  village  girls. 

Could  fill  a  house's  coffers. 
The  lowly  peasant  could  create 

A  wonderful  sensation. 
Such  people  now  are  out  of  date — 

I  want  a  situation. 
163 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

The  writer  of  these  despondent  stanzas  had  had 
a  hand  in  a  play  or  two  but  he  was  by  profession 
a  lyrist  and  not  a  dramatist;  and  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  any  of  the  bom  playwrights 
would  ever  have  sent  forth  this  cry  of  distress, 
since  fecundity  is  a  necessary  element  in  their 
endowment.  The  major  dramatic  poets  have 
always  been  affluent  in  their  productivity;  Soph- 
ocles and  Shakspere  and  Moliere  appear  to 
have  averaged  two  plays  in  every  year  of  their 
ripe  maturity.  It  is  true,  of  course,  that  they 
had  no  scruple  in  taking  their  material  wherever 
they  might  find  it,  not  only  despoiling  their  pre- 
decessors of  single  situations,  but  on  occasion 
helping  themselves  to  a  complete  plot,  ingeniously 
invented  and  adroitly  constructed  and  needing 
only  to  be  transformed  and  transfigured  by  their 
interpreting  imagination. 

We  like  to  think  that  in  these  modern  days  our 
dramatists  are  more  conscientious  in  the  acquisi- 
tion of  their  raw  material,  and  that  they  can  with- 
stand the  temptation  to  appropriate  an  entire 
plot  or  even  a  ready-made  situation.  When 
Sardou  was  scientifically  interrogated  by  a 
physiological  psychologist  as  to  his  methods  of 
composition  he  evidently  took  pleasure  in  declar- 
ing that  he  had  in  his  notebooks  dozens  of 
skeleton  stories  needing  only  to  be  articulated 
a  little  more  artfully  and  then  to  be  clothed  with 
words.  Probably  no  one  of  the  playwrights  of 
164 


SITUATIONS   WANTED 

the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  was 
more  fertile  in  invention  than  Sardou;  and  not 
a  few  effective  situations  originally  devised  by 
him  have  been  utilized  by  playmakers  in  other 
countries, — one  from  'La  Haine'  for  instance  in 
the  'Conquerors'  and  one  from  'La  Tosca'  in 
the  'Darling  of  the  Gods.'  Notwithstanding 
this  notorious  originality  Sardou  was  frequently 
accused  of  levying  on  the  inventions  of  others, 
without  recompense  or  even  acknowledgment; 
and  more  than  once  the  accusers  caught  him  "with 
the  goods  on  him" — if  this  expressive  phrase  is 
permissible.  'Les  Pommes  du  Voisin,'  for  ex- 
ample, was  traced  to  a  story  of  Charles  de  Ber- 
nard's; 'Fernande'  to  a  tale  of  Diderot's;  and 
'Fedora'  to  a  novel  of  Adolphe  Belot's.  As  it 
happened  Belot  had  dramatized  his  novel,  and 
when  he  saw  that  Sardou  had  borrowed  and 
bettered  his  plot,  he  made  no  outcry;  he  con- 
tented himself  with  arranging  for  a  revival  of  his 
play,  so  that  the  similarity  of  its  story  to  Sardou's 
might  be  made  immediately  manifest. 

When  Mario  Uchard  asserted  that  the  domi- 
nant situation  in  his  'La  Fiammina'  had  been 
lifted  by  Sardou  for  service  in  'Georgette,'  Sar- 
dou retorted  by  citing  three  or  four  earlier  pieces 
and  stories  in  which  an  identical  situation  could 
be  found.  Those  who  seek  equity  must  come 
into  court  with  clean  hands;  so  Uchard  lost  his 
case.  Nevertheless  the  impression  left  upon  at 
165 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

least  one  reader  of  the  testimony  was  that  Uchard 
had  no  knowledge  of  the  forgotten  fictions  which 
Sardou  disinterred,  that  he  believed  himself 
to  be  the  inventor  of  the  situation  in  dispute,  and 
that  Sardou  probably  did  derive  it  from  Uchard, 
— altho  quite  possibly  he  may  have  invented  it 
independently. 

The  fact  is  indisputable  that  the  number  of 
situations  fit  for  service  on  the  stage  is  not  in- 
finite but  rigorously  restricted.  Gozzi  declared 
that  there  were  only  thirty-six;  and  when  Goethe 
and  Schiller  sought  to  ascertain  these,  they  could 
not  fill  out  the  list.  Georges  Polti  accepted 
Gozzi's  figure  and  after  indefatigable  investiga- 
tion of  several  thousand  plays,  ancient  and 
modern,  he  catalogued  the  three  dozen  with  all 
their  available  corollaries.  Of  course  scientific 
certainty  is  not  attainable  in  such  a  counting  up; 
there  may  be  fifty-seven  varieties  or  even  ninety 
and  nine.  The  playwrights  of  this  generation 
have  to  grind  the  grist  already  ground  by  their 
predecessors  a  generation  earlier;  they  may  bor- 
row boldly,  that  is  to  say,  they  may  be  aware  that 
what  they  are  doing  has  been  done  before,  or 
they  may  be  innocently  original,  fondly  believing 
themselves  to  be  the  inventors  of  a  novel  pre- 
dicament and  unaware  that  it  was  second-hand  a 
score  of  centuries  before  they  were  born.  Their 
good  faith  can  not  fairly  be  denied,  even  if  their 
originality  can  be  disproved. 
i66 


SITUATIONS   WANTED 

There  is  the  Romeo  and  Juliet  situation,  for 
instance, — the  course  of  true  love  made  to  run 
rough  by  the  bitter  hostility  of  the  parents.  We 
can  find  it  in  'Huckleberry  Finn'  in  the  nine- 
teenth century,  and  we  can  also  find  it  in  the 
'Antigone,'  more  than  two  thousand  years  earlier; 
and  we  may  rest  assured  that  Mark  Twain  did 
not  go  to  Sophocles  for  it,  or  even  to  Shakspere. 
It  is  probably  to  be  found  in  the  fiction  of  every 
language,  dead  and  alive;  and  those  who  employ 
it  now  do  so  without  giving  a  thought  to  any  of 
its  many  earlier  users.  The  theme  is  common 
property,  to  be  utilized  at  will  by  anybody  any- 
where and  anywhen. 


During  the  run  of  the  'Chorus  Lady'  in  New 
York  I  happened  to  call  the  attention  of  Bronson 
Howard  to  the  identity  of  its  culminating  situa- 
tion with  that  in  'Lady  Windemere's  Fan.'  A 
young  woman  foolishly  adventures  herself  in  the 
apartment  of  a  man,  whereupon  an  older  woman 
goes  there  to  rescue  her;  then  when  the  younger 
woman  is  summoned  to  come  out  of  the  inner 
room  in  which  she  has  taken  refuge,  it  is  the  older 
woman  who  appears,  thus  placing  herself  in  a 
compromising  position  in  the  eyes  of  the  man 
whom  she  is  expecting  to  marry.  "  Don't  forget 
that  I  had  had  it  in  'One  of  Our  Girls,'"  Howard 
remarkt,  without  in  any  way  suggesting  that 
167 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

Oscar  Wilde  had  despoiled  him,  or  that  James 
Forbes  had  lifted  the  situation  from  either  of 
his  predecessors.  Then  I  recalled  that  1  had 
seen  it  in  an  unacted  play,  'Faith,'  by  H.  C. 
Bunner,  the  story  of  which  he  had  taken  as  the 
basis  of  a  novel  entitled,  'A  Woman  of  Honor/ 
Knowing  Bunner  and  Howard  intimately,  I  felt 
certain  that  they  had  no  doubt  as  to  their  right 
to  utilize  this  situation,  and  that  if  either  of 
them  had  been  conscious  of  any  indebtedness  to 
any  specific  predecessor  he  would  have  declared 
it  frankly. 

Bronson  Howard,  on  the  playbill  of  the  '  Henri- 
etta,' acknowledged  the  borrowing  of  a  situation 
from  'Vanity  Fair';  he  was  compelled  to  this 
confession  because  in  this  case  he  happened  to 
know  where  he  had  found  the  situation.  He 
was  aware  that  it  was  borrowed,  and  not  his  own 
invention.  A  confession  equally  complete  and 
of  a  somewhat  larger  import  is  to  be  found  in 
the  Author's  Note  prefixt  to  Maeterlinck's  play, 
'Marie  Magdeleine': 

"  i  have  borrowed  from  M.  Paul  Heyse's  drama, 
'  Maria  von  Magdala,'  the  idea  of  two  situations 
in  my  play,  namely  at  the  end  of  the  first  act, 
the  intervention  of  Christ,  who  stops  the  crowd 
raging  against  Mary  Magdalene,  with  these  words, 
spoken  behind  the  scenes:  'He  that  is  without 
sin  among  you  let  him  cast  the  first  stone';  and 
in  the  third  the  dilemma  (in  which  the  great  sinner 
168 


SITUATIONS   WANTED 

finds  herself)  of  saving  or  destroying  the  Son  of 
God,  according  as  she  consents  or  refuses  to  give 
herself  to  a  Roman.  Before  setting  to  work,  I 
askt  the  venerable  German  poet,  whom  I  hold  in 
the  highest  esteem,  for  his  permission  to  develop 
those  two  situations,  which,  so  to  speak,  were 
merely  sketcht  in  his  play,  with  its  incomparably 
richer  plot  than  mine;  and  offered  to  recognize 
his  rights  in  whatever  manner  he  thought  proper. 
My  respectful  request  was  answered  with  a  re- 
fusal, none  too  courteous,  I  regret  to  say,  and  al- 
most threatening.  From  that  moment,  I  was 
bound  to  consider  that  the  words  from  the  Gospel 
quoted  above  are  common  property;  and  that  the 
dilemma  of  which  I  speak  is  one  of  those  which 
occur  pretty  frequently  in  dramatic  literature. 
It  seemed  to  me  the  more  lawful  to  make  use  of 
it  inasmuch  as  I  had  happened  to  imagine  it  in 
the  fourth  act  of  'Joyzelle'  in  the  same  year  in 
which  'Maria  von  Magdala'  was  publisht  and 
before  I  was  able  to  become  acquainted  with  that 
play." 

Then  the  Belgian  poet  declared  that,  except  in 
so  far  as  these  two  situations  were  concerned,  his 
play  had  absolutely  nothing  in  common  with  the 
German  drama.  "Having  said  this,"  Maeter- 
linck concluded,  "  I  am  happy  to  express  to  the 
aged  master  my  gratitude  for  an  intellectual 
benefit,  which  is  not  the  less  great  for  being 
involuntary." 

169 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

This  note  calls  for  two  comments.  The  first 
is  that  altho  the  words  from  the  Gospel  are  com- 
mon property,  still  it  was  Heyse  who  first  ap- 
plied them  to  Mary  Magdalene;  and  the  second 
is  that  altho  the  dilemma  that  Maeterlinck  wanted 
to  borrow  from  'Maria  von  Magdala'  was  one 
that  he  had  already  imagined  in  '  Joyzelle'  and  one 
that  could  be  found  not  infrequently  in  earlier 
plays,  notably  in  'La  Tosca'  of  Sardou,  in  the 
'  Dame  aux  Camelias'  of  the  younger  Dumas  and 
in  the  'Marion  Delorme'  of  Victor  Hugo,  still 
it  was  Heyse  who  first  had  the  happy  thought  of 
forcing  this  dilemma  upon  Mary  Magdalene. 
When  the  Belgian  poet  persisted  in  making  his 
profit  out  of  these  two  situations  of  the  German 
story-teller,  he  may  have  seemed  to  some  rather 
high-handed  in  his  forcible  rectification  of  his 
frontier  by  the  annexation  of  territory  already 
profitably  occupied  by  his  neighbor.  To  this, 
it  is  only  fair  to  answer  that  the  application  of 
the  Gospel  words  and  the  propounding  of  this 
special  dilemma  to  Mary  Magdalene  were  so  na- 
tural as  to  be  almost  necessary,  if  her  story  was 
to  be  shaped  for  the  stage  and  sustained  by  a 
satisfactory  struggle.  They  are  so  natural  and 
so  necessary  that  Maeterlinck  might  almost 
have  been  expected  to  invent  them  for  himself 
if  he  had  not  found  them  already  invented  by 
Heyse. 


170 


SITUATIONS   WANTED 


III 


Bronson  Howard  would  have  held  that 
Maeterlinck  was  absolutely  within  his  right  in 
taking  over  from  Herr  Heyse  what  was  necessary 
for  the  improvement  of  his  own  play,  if  only  he 
declared  the  indebtedness  honestly  and  if  he 
offered  to  pay  for  it.  And  no  playwright  was 
ever  more  scrupulous  in  acknowledging  his  own 
indebtedness  than  Howard.  The  situation  which 
he  took  from  'Vanity  Fair'  for  use  in  the  'Hen- 
rietta' he  might  have  invented  easily  enough  or 
he  might  have  found  it  in  half-a-dozen  other 
places  besides  Thackeray's  novel;  but  as  he  was 
aware  that  it  had  been  suggested  to  him  by 
Thackeray's  novel,  he  simply  had  to  say  so, — 
just  as,  many  years  earlier,  on  the  playbill  of  his 
'  Moorcroft,'  he  had  credited  the  suggestion  of  its 
plot  to  a  story  by  John  Hay,  altho  this  source 
was  so  remote  that  Hay  was  able  to  say  to  me 
that  he  never  would  have  suspected  it  except  for 
the  note  on  the  program. 

When  1  assert  that  Howard  might  easily  enough 
have  invented  for  himself  the  situation  he  bor- 
rowed from  Thackeray  I  am  supported  by  my 
own  experience.  1  invented  that  situation, 
quite  forgetful  of  the  fact  that  I  must  once  have 
been  familiar  with  it  in  'Vanity  Fair';  and  I 
made  it  the  center  of  a  one-act  comedy,  'This 
Picture  and  That,'  written  almost  simultaneously 
171 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

with  the  'Henrietta/  Only  after  the  perform- 
ance of  my  little  piece  and  only  when  I  saw 
Howard's  play  with  its  note  of  acknowledgment 
to  Thackeray,  did  I  feel  called  upon  to  doubt 
my  own  originality.  A  few  years  thereafter  I 
had  the  pleasure  and  the  profit  of  collaborating 
with  Howard  in  the  composition  of  'Peter  Stuy- 
vesant,  Governor  of  New  Amsterdam/  and  when 
we  were  still  engaged  in  the  arduous  and  delight- 
ful task  of  putting  together  our  plot,  of  setting 
our  characters  upright  upon  their  feet  and  of 
seeking  situations  in  which  they  might  reveal 
themselves  effectively,  I  chanced  to  suggest  that 
we  might  perhaps  utilize  a  situation  in  a  certain 
French  drama.  I  find  that  1  have  now  for- 
gotten the  situation  and  the  title  of  the  play  in 
which  it  appeared.  I  made  the  suggestion  doubt- 
fully, as  its  acceptance  might  lay  us  open  to  the 
accusation  of  plagiarism. 

Howard  promptly  waved  aside  my  scruples  by 
a  declaration  of  principle: — "When  I  am  at  work 
on  a  play,"  he  explained,  "my  duty  as  an  artist 
is  to  make  that  play  just  as  good  as  I  can,  to 
construct  it  as  perfectly  as  possible  no  matter 
where  I  get  my  materials.  If  this  situation  you 
suggest  is  one  which  will  help  our  play,  we  should 
take  it  without  hesitation.  Our  scenario  is  cer- 
tain to  be  greatly  modified  before  we  are  satisfied 
with  it  and  ready  to  begin  on  the  actual  writing; 
and  very  likely  we  shall  find  that  this  borrowed 
172 


SITUATIONS  WANTED 

situation  which  today  seems  to  us  helpful  will 
not  survive  to  the  final  revision;  it  may  have  led 
us  to  something  finer  and  then  itself  disappeared. 
But  if,  when  the  play  is  done  at  last,  we  are  face 
to  face  with  the  fact  that  one  of  our  situations 
came  to  us  from  somebody  else, — then,  our  duty 
as  honest  men  begins.  We  must  give  due  credit 
on  the  playbill  when  the  piece  is  performed  and 
in  the  book  when  it  is  publisht.  Furthermore,  if 
the  somebody  from  whom  we  have  borrowed  is 
alive,  if  he  has  rights  either  legal  or  moral,  we 
must  secure  his  permission,  paying  whatever  may 
be  necessary." 

Bronson  Howard  was  as  candid  as  he  was 
clear-eyed;  and  the  principle  he  declared  is  one 
by  which  every  dramatist  would  do  well  to  govern 
himself.  If  a  playwright  should  be  exceedingly 
scrupulous  and  seek  to  avoid  the  use  of  any  situa- 
tion invented  and  utilized  by  any  one  of  his 
predecessors  in  the  long  history  of  playmaking, 
he  would  soon  find  himself  at  a  standstill  and  in 
a  blind  alley;  he  would  discover  speedily  that 
unused  situations  are  very  scarce.  The  play- 
wright must  perforce  resign  himself  to  the  em- 
ployment of  those  which  have  already  seen  ser- 
vice. Where  there  is  specific  obligation  he  should 
acknowledge  it  frankly, — unless  indeed  the  bor- 
rowed situation  is  so  well  known  that  acknowl- 
edgment may  seem  a  work  of  supererogation.  It 
is  instantly  obvious  that  the  'Rantzau'  of  Erck- 
173 


THE   PRINCIPLES  OF   PLAYMAKING 

mann-Chatrian  is  an  Alsatian  'Romeo  and 
Juliet'  and  that  the  'Andre  Cornelis'  of  Paul 
Bourget  is  a  Parisian  'Hamlet'; — these  resem- 
blances were  so  very  evident  that  they  could 
not  be  denied  and  therefore  need  not  be  declared. 


IV 

With  characteristic  wisdom  and  with  a  liber- 
ality as  characteristic,  Goethe  held  that  what  was 
really  important  was  not  where  a  situation  came 
from  but  what  use  was  made  of  it.  He  noted 
that  Scott  had  helpt  himself  to  a  situation  from 
'Egmont,'  and  "because  he  did  it  well,  he  de- 
serves praise."  We  may  be  sure  that  Goethe 
would  have  only  commendation  for  the  skill  with 
which  the  Jacobean  playwrights  despoiled  the 
Spanish  stage,  because  these  gifted  Englishmen 
always  bettered  what  they  borrowed.  In  his 
illuminating  little  book  on  the  Spanish  drama, 
George  Henry  Lewes  called  attention  to  the 
imaginative  energy  with  which  Fletcher  in  the 
'Custom  of  the  Country,'  transformed  an  in- 
geniously contrived  situation  in  Calderon's 
*Mejor  esta  que  Estaba'  into  a  superbly  dra- 
matic scene. 

In  the  Spanish  piece,  Don  Carlos  rushes  in 
and  begs  Flora  to  conceal  him  and  save  his  life. 
She  has  no  sooner  hidden  him  than  his  pur- 
suers enter, — to  tell  her  that  they  have  followed 
174 


SITUATIONS   WANTED 

into  the  house  a  cavalier  who  has  just  killed  her 
cousin.  She  keeps  her  promise  to  protect  the 
hidden  fugitive;  and  she  tells  those  who  are 
seeking  him  that  he  sprang  from  the  window  into 
the  garden  and  so  escaped.  This  is  an  effective 
scene;  but  it  is  infinitely  inferior  to  that  made 
out  of  it  by  Fletcher  (possibly  aided  by  Mas- 
singer).  Donna  Guiomar  is  alone  in  her  bed  cham- 
ber; she  is  anxious  about  her  absent  son  and  she 
kneels  in  prayer.  Rutilio  rushes  in.  He  is  a 
stranger, 

a  most  unfortunate  stranger. 
That,  called  unto  it  by  my  enemy's  pride. 
Have  left  him  dead  in  the  streets.     Justice  pur- 
sues me, 
And  for  that  life  I  took  unwillingly. 
And  in  a  fair  defense,  I  must  lose  mine. 
Unless  you,  in  your  charity,  protect  me. 
Your  house  is  now  my  sanctuary ! 

Donna  Guiomar  agrees  to  shelter  him  and  bids 
him  hide  himself  in  the  hangings  of  her  bed, 
saying 

Be  of  comfort; 
Once  more  I  give  my  promise  for  your  safety. 
All  men  are  subject  to  such  accidents. 
Especially  the  valiant; — and  who  knows  not. 
But  that  the  charity  I  afford  this  stranger. 
My  only  son  elsewhere  may  stand  in  need  of. 
175 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

Then  enter  officers  and  servants  with  a  bier 
whereupon  a  body  lies  lifeless;  and  a  servant 
declares  that 

Your  only  son, 
My  lord  Duarte*s  slain ! 

And  an  officer  explains  that 

his  murderer. 
Pursued  by  us,  was  by  a  boy  discovered 
Entering  your  house. 

The  noble  mother,  stricken  to  the  heart,  is  true 
to  her  promise.  She  tells  the  officers  to  go  forth 
and  search  for  the  murderer.  Then  at  last 
when  she  is  left  alone  with  the  corpse  of  her  son, 
she  orders  the  concealed  slayer  to  make  his  es- 
cape:— 

Come  fearless  forth !    But  let  thy  face  be  cov- 

er'd. 
That  I  hereafter  be  not  forc*d  to  know  thee ! 

This  is  an  incomparable  example  of  the  deep 
difference  between  the  theatrically  effective  and 
the  truly  dramatic, — between  adroit  story-telling 
on  the  stage  for  the  sake  of  the  story  itself,  and 
story-telling  for  the  sake  of  the  characters  in- 
volved in  the  situation.  The  incident  invented 
by  Calderon  is  ingenious  and  it  provides  a  shock 
176 


SITUATIONS  WANTED 

of  surprise  and  a  thrill  of  suspense;  but  how  much 
richer  and  nobler  is  the  situation  as  Fletcher  im- 
proved it,  and  how  superbly  did  he  phrase  the 
motive  and  the  emotion  of  the  stricken  mother ! 
The  Jacobean  poet  achieved  surprise  and  sus- 
pense and  also  a  larger  significance,  because  he 
had  imagination  to  project  the  scene  as  a  whole, 
to  prepare  it,  to  express  its  ultimate  value,  and  to 
end  it  to  the  keen  satisfaction  of  the  spectators. 


The  younger  Dumas,  a  playmaker  of  surpris- 
ing skill,  was  once  persuaded  to  rewrite  a  play 
by  Emile  de  Girardin,  the  'Supplice  d'une 
Femme.'  The  original  author  protested  that 
he  could  not  recognize  his  drama  in  the  new 
version.  Dumas  explained  that  the  original 
play  had  been  cast  aside  because  it  was  a  poor 
piece  of  work,  quite  impossible  on  the  stage.  But 
it  had  a  central  situation  which  Dumas  declared 
to  be  very  interesting  and  very  dramatic;  and 
therefore  Dumas  had  written  a  new  play  to  pre- 
sent this  novel  and  powerful  situation  so  as  to 
make  it  effective  in  the  theater,  which  was  pre- 
cisely what  Girardin  had  been  incapable  of  doing, 
altho  he  had  himself  invented  the  situation. 

"But  a  situation  is  not  an  idea,"  Dumas  ex- 
plained in  the  article  in  which  he  justified  his 
rejection  of  Girardin's  plot  and  construction. 
177 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

"An  idea  has  a  beginning,  a  middle  and  an  end, 
— an  exposition,  a  development  and  a  con- 
clusion. Anybody  may  happen  on  a  dramatic 
situation;  but  it  must  be  prepared  for;  it  must 
be  made  possible  and  acceptable;  and  above  all 
the  knot  must  be  untied  logically."  Then 
Dumas  illustrated  these  assertions  by  suggesting 
the  kind  of  dramatic  situation  which  anybody 
might  happen  on.  A  young  man  falls  in  love  with 
a  girl;  he  asks  her  hand;  and  they  are  married. 
Then,  and  only  then,  at  the  very  moment  when 
he  is  about  to  bear  her  away  to  their  future  home, 
he  learns  categorically  that  he  has  married  his 
own  sister.  "There's  a  situation!  and  very  in- 
teresting indeed.  But  how  are  you  going  to  get 
out  of  it?  I  give  you  a  thousand  guesses — and 
then  I  give  you  the  situation  itself,  if  you  want  it. 
He  who  can  start  with  this  and  make  a  good  play 
out  of  it,  will  be  the  real  author  of  that  play,  and 
I  shall  claim  no  share  in  it." 

The  situation,  around  which  Girardin  had 
written  the  'Supplice  d'une  Femme,'  was  difficult 
and  it  was  dangerous;  but  it  was  not  impossible. 
Dumas  was  able  to  find  a  way  out  and  to  bestow 
upon  the  story  an  attractive  exposition,  a  highly 
emotional  development  and  a  conclusion  at  once 
logical  and  acceptable  to  a  profitable  succession 
of  audiences.  And  this  is  just  what  one  of  the 
establisht  American  dramatists  was  able  to  do  re- 
cently for  a  novice  who  had  happened  on  a  strong 
178 


SITUATIONS   WANTED 

and  striking  situation.  The  piece  in  which  the 
'prentice  playwright  had  put  his  situation  was 
promptly  rejected  by  all  the  managers,  until  at 
last  in  despair  he  went  to  the  older  dramatist  for 
advice.  He  had  put  his  powerful  situation  in  the 
first  act,  so  that  it  was  inadequately  prepared 
for  while  its  superior  weight  prevented  his  giving 
to  the  later  acts  the  increasing  force  which  later 
acts  ought  to  possess.  The  remedy  suggested  by 
the  more  experienced  dramatist  was  simple;  it 
was  to  begin  and  to  end  the  story  earlier — 
to  cancel  the  original  second  and  third  acts,  and 
to  compose  a  new  first  and  second  act  to  lead  up 
to  the  strong  and  striking  situation,  which  could 
then  be  amply  developt  in  the  new  third  and 
last  act  to  be  made  out  of  the  material  in  the 
original  first  act. 

VI 

In  'Rupert  of  Hentzau,'  the  sequel  to  the 
'Prisoner  of  Zenda/  there  is  a  superb  situation 
which  needed  to  be  solved  and  which  cried  aloud 
for  poetic  treatment.  Rudolph  Rassendyll  looks 
almost  exactly  like  the  King  of  Ruritania.  In  the 
'Prisoner  of  Zenda'  circumstances  force  him  to 
take  the  King's  place  and  to  be  crowned  in  his 
stead;  so  it  is  that  he  meets  the  King's  cousin, 
the  Princess  Flavia,  and  falls  in  love  with  her 
and  she  with  him.  In  'Rupert  of  Hentzau'  we 
find  that  the  Princess  for  reasons  of  state  has 
179 


THE    PRINCIPLES  OF   PLAYMAKING 

married  her  cousin;  and  then  circumstances 
again  force  Rassendyll  to  personate  the  King, 
who  is  suddenly  murdered  and  his  body  burnt. 
What  is  Rassendyll  to  do?  Shall  he  accept  the 
throne  and  take  with  it  the  Queen  who  loves 
him  and  whom  he  loves?  The  Queen  begs  him 
to  do  this  for  her  sake.  If  he  decides  to  profit 
by  this  series  of  accidents,  then  he  must,  for  the 
rest  of  his  life,  live  a  lie,  knowing  that  he  is  hold- 
ing that  to  which  he  has  no  right,  legal  or  moral. 

Here  is  the  stuff  out  of  which  serious  drama  is 
made;  here  is  one  of  the  great  passionate  crises 
of  existence,  when,  in  Stevenson's  phrase,  "duty 
and  inclination  come  nobly  to  the  grapple." 
Here  is  an  ethical  dilemma  demanding  a  large 
and  lofty  poetic  treatment, — like  that  which 
Fletcher  bestowed  on  the  situation  he  borrowed 
from  Calderon.  Unfortunately  the  author  of 
the  story  was  unable  to  rise  to  this  exalted  alti- 
tude; and  he  got  out  of  the  complication  by  a  tame 
device,  which  simply  dodged  the  difficulty.  Be- 
fore the  hero  can  declare  his  decision,  he  is  as- 
sassinated. The  author  had  happened  on  a  fine 
situation;  he  was  adroit  in  his  exposition  of  it 
and  in  his  development;  but  he  failed  to  find  a 
fit  conclusion. 

Perhaps,  in  the  course  of  time,  when  the  hour 
strikes  for  a  rebirth  of  the  poetic  drama,  a  drama- 
tist of  a  later  generation, — a  poet  who  is  truly 
a  playwright  and  a  playwright  who  is  really  a 
1 80 


SITUATIONS  WANTED 

poet, — will  be  tempted  to  take  over  this  situation 
invented  by  the  ingenious  novelist;  and  he  may 
be  able  to  discover  a  satisfactory  conclusion  and 
to  treat  it  with  the  interpreting  imagination  it 
demands. 

(I9J7) 


l8l 


X 

THE   PLAYWRIGHT  AND   THE   PLAYER 


IN  one  of  his  essays  Robert  Louis  Stevenson 
discust  the  technic  of  style;  and  he  felt  it 
necessary  to  begin  by  apologizing  and  by  ad- 
mitting that  to  the  average  man  there  is  nothing 
more  disenchanting  "than  to  be  shown  the  springs 
and  mechanism  of  any  art.  All  our  arts  and  occu- 
pations lie  wholly  on  the  surface;  it  is  on  the 
surface  that  we  perceive  their  beauty,  fitness, 
and  significance;  and  to  pry  below  is  to  be 
appalled  by  their  emptiness  and  shockt  by  the 
coarseness  of  the  strings  and  pulleys."  He  in- 
sisted that  most  of  us  dislike  all  explanations  of 
artistic  method,  on  the  principle  laid  down  in 
'Hudibras': — 

Still  the  less  they  understand 

The  more  they  admire  the  sleight-of-hand. 

No  doubt,  this  is  true  of  the  majority,  who  are 

delighted  by  the  result  of  the  conjuror's  skill  and 

prefer  not  to  have  its  secret  revealed  to  them. 

But  it  is  not  true  of  a  minority  who  are  ever 

182 


THE    PLAYWRIGHT  AND   THE    PLAYER 

eager  to  discover  the  devices  whereby  the  marvel 
has  been  wrought;  and  it  is  this  minority  who 
constitute  the  insiders,  so  to  speak,  so  far  as  that 
art  is  concerned,  the  majority  being  content  to  be 
forever  outsiders  ignorant  of  the  technical  diffi- 
culties and  the  technical  dangers  which  the  artist 
has  triumphantly  overcome.  The  insider,  the 
expert,  the  artist  himself,  the  critic  of  wise  pene- 
tration, is  ever  intensely  interested  in  technic, — 
as  Stevenson  himself  testified  in  another  essay: 
"A  technicality  is  always  welcome  to  the  ex- 
pert, whether  in  athletics,  art  or  law;  1  have  heard 
the  best  kind  of  talk  on  technicalities  from  such 
rare  and  happy  persons  as  both  know  and  love 
their  business." 

It  is  a  sign  of  the  constantly  increasing  interest 
in  the  drama  that  more  and  more  theatergoers 
are  showing  an  eager  desire  to  understand  the 
secrets  of  the  two  allied  arts  of  the  theater, — 
the  art  of  the  playmaker  and  the  art  of  the  player, 
each  dependent  upon  the  other,  each  incapable 
of  exercise  without  the  aid  of  the  other.  The 
work  of  the  author  can  be  revealed  completely 
only  by  the  work  of  the  actor;  and  the  actor  can 
do  nothing  unless  the  author  gives  him  something 
to  do.  The  dramaturgic  art  and  the  histrionic 
art  are  interdependent;  they  are  Siamese  twins, 
bound  by  a  tie  of  flesh  and  blood.  They  can 
quarrel,  as  perhaps  Chang  and  Eng  may  have  had 
their  fraternal  disagreements;  but  they  can 
183 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

separate  only  under  the  penalty  of  a  double 
death.  At  every  hour  of  their  joint  existence 
they  have  to  consider  and  to  serve  one  another, 
whatever  their  jealousies  may  be. 

It  is  true  that  there  have  been  periods  when 
acting  flourisht  and  the  drama  languisht,  as  in 
the  midyears  of  the  nineteenth  century  in  Great 
Britain  and  the  United  States.  Yet  in  these 
decades  the  performer  unprovided  with  profitable 
parts  by  the  playwrights  of  his  own  time,  was 
able  to  find  what  he  needed  in  the  plays  of  the 
past,  in  which  moreover  he  could  experience  the 
keen  pleasure  of  measuring  himself  with  the  mem- 
ory of  the  foremost  performers  of  the  preceding 
generation.  John  Philip  Kemble  cared  little  for 
new  parts  in  new  plays;  and  it  was  said  of  him 
that  he  thought  all  the  good  parts  had  already 
been  written.  Edwin  Booth  was  content  with 
the  characters  that  Shakspere  had  created;  and 
Joseph  Jefferson  found  in  one  of  Sheridan's  come- 
dies a  character  he  preferred  to  any  of  those  in 
the  countless  modern  plays  which  aspiring  authors 
were  forever  pestering  him  to  produce. 

It  needs  to  be  noted  however  that  there  is 
danger  to  the  drama  in  these  periods  when  the 
actor  is  supreme  and  when  he  feels  at  liberty  to 
revise  the  masterpieces  of  the  past  in  accord 
with  his  own  whim  and  perhaps  in  compliance 
with  his  own  self-esteem.  Jefferson  was  both 
skilful  and  tactful  in  his  rearrangement  of  the 
184 


THE    PLAYWRIGHT   AND    THE    PLAYER 

'  Rivals';  he  added  but  little  of  his  own  and  what 
he  omitted  was  little  loss.  None  the  less  was 
there  a  certain  justice  in  the  gibe  of  his  cousin, 
William  Warren,  to  the  effect  that  however  de- 
lightful Jefferson's  Bob  Acres  might  be,  it  left 
"Sheridan  twenty  miles  away."  Far  less  ex- 
cusable was  Macready's  violent  condensation  of 
the  'Merchant  of  Venice'  into  a  mere  Shylock 
piece,  omitting  the  final  act  at  Belmont  and  end- 
ing with  the  trial  scene. 

It  is  in  these  periods  of  dramatic  penury  that 
the  actor  is  able  to  usurp  an  undue  share  of  popu- 
lar attention.  In  periods  of  dramatic  productiv- 
ity his  importance  is  less  unduly  magnified;  and 
even  if  plays  are  written  specially  for  him,  they 
are  rarely  mere  vehicles  for  the  display  of  his 
histrionic  accomplishment;  most  of  them  are 
solidly  constructed  works  of  art,  in  which  the 
character  he  is  to  personate  is  kept  in  its  proper 
proportion  to  the  others.  A  playwright  willing 
to  manufacture  a  piece  which  is  only  a  vehicle 
for  an  actor  is  humbling  himself  to  be  the  domestic 
of  the  practitioner  of  the  sister  art.  But  the 
dramatist  who  is  not  eager  to  profit  by  the  special 
gifts  of  the  foremost  actors,  who  are  his  con- 
temporaries and  his  comrades,  is  simply  neglecting 
his  obvious  opportunities. 


185 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 
II 

It  is  a  credit  and  not  a  discredit  to  Sophocles 
and  to  Shal<spere,  to  Moliere  and  to  Racine,  to 
Sheridan  and  to  Augier  that  they  made  use  of  the 
possibihties  they  perceived  in  the  performers  of 
their  own  time.  It  may  be  a  discredit  to  Sar- 
dou  that  he  wrote  a  series  of  effective  but  false 
melodramas  for  Sarah-Bernhardt,  not  because 
he  composed  these  plays  for  her,  but  because 
they  were  unworthy  of  him.  It  was  not  a  dis- 
credit to  Rostand  that  he  put  together  'Cyrano 
de  Bergerac'  and  'L'Aiglon'  and  'Chantecler/ 
one  after  another,  in  order  that  the  dominant 
character  in  each  should  be  impersonated  by  the 
incomparably  versatile  Coquelin,  because  in  com- 
posing them  for  this  comedian  the  author  did 
not  subordinate  himself;  because  he  did  not  sacri- 
fice a  play  to  a  part;  and  because  he  was  not  con- 
tent, as  Sardou  had  been,  to  make  a  whole  play 
out  of  a  single  part. 

To  those  who  had  followed  the  career  of  this 
comedian  it  was  obvious  that  'Cyrano  de  Berge- 
rac' had  been  written  not  only  for  Coquelin  but 
around  him,  in  order  to  let  him  display  in  one 
piece  as  many  as  possible  of  the  facets  of  his 
genius  already  disclosed  in  a  host  of  other  plays. 
It  was  equally  evident  that  'Chantecler,'  with  all 
its  lyric  exuberance,  was  also  a  play  tailor-made 
for  the  brilliant  comedian  with  the  clarion  voice, 
i86 


THE    PLAYWRIGHT   AND   THE    PLAYER 

who  could  be  both  vivacious  and  pathetic.  It  is 
even  possible  that  the  first  suggestion  of  this 
barnyard  fantasy  may  be  found  in  the  fact  that 
the  comedian  was  in  the  habit  of  signing  his  notes 
to  his  intimates  with  the  single  syllable  "Coq." 

But  it  is  likely  to  surprize  those  who  remember 
that  the  part  of  the '  Eaglet'  was  written  for  Sarah- 
Bernhardt  and  that  Coquelin  did  not  appear  in  the 
play  when  it  was  originally  performed,  to  learn 
that  none  the  less  was  it  begun  with  the  sole  in- 
tention of  providing  him  with  a  congenial  char- 
acter. Yet  such  is  the  case,  as  Coquelin  told  me 
himself. 

As  he  and  Rostand  were  leaving  one  of  the  final 
rehearsals  of  'Cyrano,'  the  poet  said  to  the 
player,  "this  is  not  going  to  be  the  last  piece  that 
I  shall  write  for  you,  of  course.  Tell  me  now, 
what  kind  of  a  character  do  you  want?" 

And  Coquelin  answered  politely  that  he  would 
be  delighted  to  produce  any  piece  that  Rostand 
might  bring  him. 

"No,  no,"  returned  the  author;  "that  is  all 
very  well;  but  what  I'd  like  to  do  is  to  write  a 
play  specifically  for  you,  and  to  please  you.  Isn't 
there  some  character  which  you  have  always 
longed  to  impersonate  and  which  has  never  come 
your  way?" 

Coquelin  thought  for  a  moment  and  then  he 
admitted  that  there  was  one  type  which  he  had 
not  attempted  and  which  he  had  often  wisht  to 
187 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

act.  This  was  an  aging  veteran  of  Napoleon's 
armies,  who  had  followed  the  Little  Corporal  in 
all  his  campaigns  from  Egypt  to  Russia, — the 
type  depicted  in  Raffet's  sketches,  the  type  famil- 
iarly known  as  "the  old  grumbler  of  the  Em- 
pire," le  vieux  grognard  de  V Empire. 

"Excellent!"  cried  Rostand.  "Excellent!  I 
shall  set  to  work  on  it  as  soon  as  we  get '  Cyrano' 
out  of  the  way." 

If  this  was  the  starting  point  of  'L'Aiglon/ 
how  was  it  that  the  play  was  written  for  Sarah- 
Bernhardt  and  not  for  Coquelin?  And  to  find 
the  answer  to  this  we  must  go  into  the  workshop 
of  the  dramatist.  If  the  old  soldier  of  Napoleon 
is  to  be  the  central  figure  of  the  play,  then  Na- 
poleon himself  must  not  appear  in  the  piece,  since 
the  Emperor  was  a  personality  so  overmastering 
that  he  could  not  be  made  a  subordinate  in  the 
story.  Therefore  the  action  must  take  place 
after  Napoleon's  exile  and  death.  Yet,  after  all, 
the  old  soldier  is  devoted  to  Napoleon;  and  if  he 
is  to  be  interesting  on  the  stage,  he  must  be  a  man 
of  action,  strong-willed,  resolute  and  ingenious; 
he  must  be  engaged  in  a  plot  intimately  related 
to  Napoleon.  It  is  well  known  that  after  the 
return  of  the  Bourbons  the  Bonapartists  were 
speedily  disaffected  and  that  there  were  several 
intrigues  to  restore  the  empire  with  Napoleon's 
son  as  Emperor. 

Thus  Rostand  was  led  irresistibly  to  the  little 
i88 


THE    PLAYWRIGHT  AND  THE    PLAYER 

King  of  Rome,  an  exile  in  Austria  living  almost  in 
captivity  with  his  Austrian  mother.  And  then 
all  the  possibilities  of  the  pale  and  pathetic 
profile  of  the  Eaglet  disclosed  themselves  to 
Rostand  one  after  another;  and  from  the  old 
soldier  planning  to  put  his  master's  son  on  his 
master's  throne  the  poet's  interest  shifted  to  the 
young  prince,  in  whom  there  were  resemblances 
to  'Richard  IP  and  to  'Hamlet.'  So  the  Duke 
of  Reichstadt  became  the  hero  of  the  piece  and 
took  the  center  of  the  stage.  Yet  the  old  soldier 
Flambeau  still  occupied  Rostand's  mind  and 
he  was  all-^wed  to  occupy  a  wholly  disproportion- 
ate space  in  the  play.  In  the  plot  of  'L'Aiglon' 
as  it  was  finally  elaborated,  Flambeau  ought  to 
have  been  only  one  of  a  host  of  accessory  char- 
acters revolving  around  the  feeble  and  weak-willed 
prince  crusht  beneath  a  responsibility  far  be- 
yond his  capacity. 

Ill 

When  Jules  Lemaitre,  as  the  critic  of  the  De- 
hats,  was  called  on  to  comment  upon  his  own  com- 
edy, 'L'Age  Difficile,'  he  contented  himself  with 
telling  his  readers  how  he  came  to  write  the  play 
and  with  describing  the  successive  steps  of  its 
inception,  growth,  and  composition.  The  excit- 
ing cause  was  the  suggestion  that  he  should  pre- 
pare a  piece  for  Coquelin.  Naturally  he  was  de- 
lighted at  the  possibility  of  having  so  accom- 
189 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

plisht  an  interpreter  for  the  chief  character  of  the 
play  he  might  write;  and  his  invention  was  in- 
stantly set  in  motion.  As  an  actor  is  likely  to  be 
most  effective  when  he  is  least  made  up,  Lemaitre 
started  with  Coquelin  as  a  man  of  about  forty- 
five  or  fifty;  and  this  led  him  to  consider  the 
special  dangers  of  that  period  in  a  man's  life. 
So  it  was  that  he  hit  upon  the  theme  of  his 
comedy,  the  'Difficult  Age';  and  this  theme  he 
developt  so  richly  that  the  story  seemed  to  have 
been  devised  solely  to  illustrate  the  thesis.  In 
fact,  if  Lemaitre  had  not  frankly  confest  that  the 
exciting  cause  of  his  comedy  was  the  desire  to 
find  a  part  to  fit  Coquelin,  no  spectator  of  the 
play  would  ever  have  suspected  it. 

If  there  had  been  no  Coquelin,  there  would 
have  been  no  'Age  Difficile'  and  no  'Chantecler,* 
no  'Aiglon'  and  no  'Cyrano  de  Bergerac,' — just 
as  it  is  possible  that  without  Mile.  Champsmesle 
there  might  have  been  no  'Phedre'  and  without 
Burbage  there  might  have  been  no  'Hamlet,'  no 
'  Othello '  and  no '  Lear.'  For  the  full  expansion  of 
the  energy  of  the  dramatic  poet  the  stimulus  of 
the  actor  is  as  necessary  as  the  response  of  the 
audience.  In  his  old  age  Goethe  confided  to 
Eckermann  that  he  had  been  discouraged  as  a 
dramatist  by  the  lack  of  these  two  necessities. 
"  If  I  had  produced  an  effect,  and  had  met  with 
applause,  1  would  have  written  a  round  dozen  of 
pieces  such  as  '  Iphigenia'  and  'Tasso':  there  was 
190 


THE    PLAYWRIGHT   AND   THE    PLAYER 

no  deficiency  of  material.  But  actors  were  want- 
ing to  represent  such  pieces  with  hfe  and  spirit; 
and  a  public  was  wanting  to  hear  and  receive  them 
with  sympathy." 

The  merely  literary  critic  who  judges  a  drama 
as  if  it  were  a  lyric,  as  if  it  were  simply  the  ex- 
pression of  the  poet's  mood  at  the  moment  of 
creation,  often  fails  to  understand  the  play  be- 
cause he  has  no  consciousness  of  the  complexity 
of  the  dramatic  art,  which  must  needs  languish 
unless  there  is  the  hearty  cooperation  of  the  three 
necessary  elements, — the  playwright  to  compose, 
the  player  to  impersonate,  and  the  playgoer  to 
respond  to  the  double  appeal  of  player  and  play- 
wright. 

The  dramatists  have  always  been  conscious  of 
the  intimacy  with  which  their  work  is  associated 
with  the  work  of  the  actors.  In  the  preface  to 
one  of  his  slightest  pieces,  'L'Amour  Medecin,' 
Moliere  put  his  opinion  on  record:  "Everybody 
knows  that  comedies  are  written  only  to  be  acted, 
and  I  recommend  the  reading  of  this  play  only 
to  those  who  have  eyes  to  discover  while  reading 
all  the  by-play  of  the  stage."  And  Mr.  Henry 
Arthur  Jones  asserts  that  "actors  are  on  the  stage 
to  fill  in  a  hundred  supplementary  touches  to 
the  author's  ten; — but  this  leads  to  the  quaintest 
results,  since  the  actor  has  the  choice  of  filling  in 
the  wrong  hundred  in  the  wrong  places.  And  the 
public  and  critics  always  suppose  that  he  has 
191 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

filled  them  in  rightly.  How  can  they  do  other- 
wise ?  They  can  judge  only  by  what  they  see  and 
hear." 

IV 

Here  is  what  may  be  called  the  paradox  of 
dramatic  criticism — that  on  the  first  night  of  an 
unpublisht  play,  the  public  and  the  critics  have 
to  take  the  performance  as  a  whole,  finding  it  a 
task  of  insuperable  delicacy  to  disentangle  the 
work  of  the  players  from  the  work  of  the  play- 
wright. They  can  form  their  opinion  of  the  value 
of  the  play  itself  only  from  that  single  perform- 
ance; and  they  can  form  their  opinion  of  the 
value  of  the  individual  actor  only  from  the  im- 
pression he  has  made  at  that  performance.  Now, 
it  is  matter  of  common  knowledge  that  sometimes 
good  parts  are  ill-played  and  bad  parts  well- 
played.  But  on  the  first  night,  how  are  the  public 
and  the  critics  to  know  in  advance  which  are  the 
good  parts  and  which  are  the  bad  parts  ?  There 
are  parts  which  seem  to  be  showy  and  effective, 
and  which  are  not  so  in  reality.  In  French  there 
is  a  term  for  them ; — "  false  good  parts,"  faux  bons 
roles.  For  example,  in  Sardou's  '  Patrie,'  perhaps 
his  finest  play,  the  heroine  has  to  express  an  in- 
cessant series  of  emotions;  she  has  abundant  occa- 
sion for  powerful  acting;  and  yet  half-a-dozen 
actresses  of  authority  have  been  tempted  to  essay 
the  part  without  success.  The  character  is  high- 
192 


THE    PLAYWRIGHT   AND   THE    PLAYER 

strung  and  wilful,  but  she  is  not  true  and  sincere; 
she  is  artificial  and  arbitrary;  and  the  audience 
is  dumbly  conscious  of  this  trickiness  and  looks 
on  at  her  exhibition  of  histrionics  with  languid 
sympathy.     It  is  a  false  good  part. 

On  the  other  hand  there  are  parts  that  "play 
themselves"  and  there  are  pieces  that  are  "actor- 
proof" — effective  even  if  performed  only  by  an 
ordinary  company  without  any  actors  of  accred- 
ited ability.  Hamlet  is  a  part  that  "plays  itself," 
since  the  plot  of  the  piece  is  so  moving  that  it 
supports  the  performer  of  the  central  figure  even 
if  he  is  not  really  equal  to  the  character.  George 
Henry  Lewes  asserted  that  no  one  of  the  leading 
English  tragedians  had  ever  completely  failed  as 
Hamlet, — whereas  the  greatest  of  them  all,  David 
Garrick,  had  made  so  complete  a  fiasco  as  Othello 
that  he  never  dared  to  appear  in  the  piece  a  second 
time. 

The  'Tartuffe'  of  Moliere  is  an  actof-proof  play, 
holding  the  interest  of  the  audience  even  when  an 
uninspired  company  is  giving  a  ragged  perform- 
ance. Almost  as  actor-proof  are  'As  You  Like 
It'  and  the  'School  for  Scandal.'  All  three  of 
these  comedies  reward  the  most  competent  and 
the  most  careful  performance;  but  they  do  not  de- 
mand this.  Their  appeal  is  so  broad  and  so  certain 
that  they  can  be  carried  off  by  good  will,  aided  in 
the  case  of  the  two  English  comedies  by  high 
spirits.  Then  too  their  reputation  is  solidly 
193 


THE   PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

establisht  and  widespread;  and  the  spectator 
comes  to  them  assured  that  he  will  have  enter- 
tainment, predisposed  to  easy  enjoyment.  Quite 
possibly  no  one  of  the  three  comedies  was  actor- 
proof  at  its  first  performance;  and  perhaps  they 
might  then  have  been  killed  by  an  inadequate 
performance  of  any  one  of  their  more  important 
characters. 

Moliere  was  his  own  stage-manager  and  at  the 
first  performance  of  'L'Amour  Medecin'  he  was 
responsible  for  "all  the  by-play  of  the  stage." 
And  when  Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones  produces  his 
own  plays  he  takes  care  that  the  actor  shall  not  fill 
in  the  wrong  "hundred  supplementary  touches.'* 
But  when  the  author  of  the  play  is  dead  or  un- 
able to  be  present  at  the  rehearsals,  we  sometimes 
see  "the  quaintest  results."  There  are  actors 
who  are  supersubtle  in  the  supplying  of  the  little 
touches  which  the  dramatist  has  left  to  their  dis- 
cretion, and  who  so  embroider  the  parts  they  are 
playing  that  the  main  outline  is  obscured  and  en- 
feebled. 

At  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  there  was 
an  actor  of  prominence  whose  career  I  had  fol- 
lowed with  interest  for  more  than  a  score  of  years, 
observing  the  expansion  of  his  reputation  and  the 
deterioration  of  his  art.  When  I  first  saw  him  on 
the  stage  he  was  direct  and  swift,  creating  a  char- 
acter in  bold  outline;  and  at  the  end  of  a  quarter 
of  a  century  he  had  become  painfully  over-in- 
194 


THE    PLAYWRIGHT  AND  THE    PLAYER 

genious  in  the  accumulation  of  superfluities  of 
detail  which  maskt  the  main  Hues  of  the  part. 
In  fact  he  had  begun  by  acting  inside  the  char- 
acter and  he  had  ended  by  acting  outside  it. 
The  result  was  quaint  enough;  but  it  was  also 
pitiably  ineffective;  and  if  the  authors  of  the 
plays  he  thus  disfigured  by  the  trivialities  of  his 
jig-saw  fret-work  could  have  beheld  his  perform- 
ance, they  would  have  cried  out  in  protest  at  this 
betrayal  of  their  purpose. 

(i9'5-) 


195 


XI 

IRISH  PLAYS  AND  IRISH  PLAYWRIGHTS 


IT  is  one  of  the  many  interesting  and  significant 
coincidences  of  history  that  the  more  com- 
pletely a  smaller  country  may  be  absorbed  into 
a  larger  nation,  the  more  likely  are  the  inhabitants 
of  the  lesser  community  to  cherish  their  own  pro- 
vincial peculiarities.  They  seek  to  keep  alive 
the  local  traditions  and  to  revive  the  local  cus- 
toms; and  often  they  strive  to  reinvigorate  the 
local  dialect  and  to  raise  it  to  a  loftier  level,  that 
it  may  be  fitter  to  express  their  local  patriotism, 
different  from  their  larger  national  patriotism 
but  in  no  wise  antagonistic  to  it.  As  a  result  of 
this  pride  in  the  past  and  of  this  pleasure  in  the 
present  there  is  likely  to  arise  a  local  literature 
in  the  local  variation  from  the  standard  speech 
of  the  nation — the  standard  speech  assiduously 
taught  in  the  schools,  which  are  ever  struggling 
to  eradicate  in  the  illiterate  every  vestige  of  the 
dialect  that  the  men  of  letters  are  cultivating  with 
careful  art.  And  this  deliberate  provincialism 
is  not  factional  or  separatist;  it  indicates  no  re- 
laxing of  loyalty  toward  the  nation.  Indeed,  in 
196 


IRISH    PLAYS   AND    IRISH    PLAYWRIGHTS 

SO  far  as  any  political  significance  is  concerned, 
the  outflowering  of  a  dialect  literature  may 
be  taken  as  evidence  of  national  solidarity  and  of 
the  dying  down  of  older  sectional  animosities. 

It  was  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury and  in  the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth, 
when  Scotland  had  at  last  accepted  the  Han- 
overian succession,  that  Burns  and  Scott  and 
lesser  lyrists  of  a  varying  endowment  made  use 
of  the  broad  Scots  tongue  to  sing  the  sorrows  and 
the  joys  of  the  North  Briton.  It  was  in  the  third 
and  fourth  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century,  after 
the  fierce  ardor  of  the  Revolutionary  expansion 
and  of  the  Napoleonic  conquests  had  finally 
welded  France  into  a  self-conscious  unity,  that 
Mistral  and  his  fellow-bards  told  again  the  old 
legends  of  Provence  and  illumined  that  fair  land 
with  new  tales  of  no  less  charm,  all  composed  in  a 
modern  revision  of  the  soft  and  gentle  speech  of 
the  troubadours.  And  now  it  is  just  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  twentieth  century,  after  three  score 
years  of  incessant  agitation  have  removed  most  of 
the  wrongs  of  the  Irish  people,  that  Yeats  and 
Synge  and  Lady  Gregory  have  bidden  their  fellow- 
countrymen  to  gaze  at  themselves  in  the  mirror  of 
the  drama  and  to  listen  to  their  own  persuasive 
brogue. 

Surprize  has  been  exprest  at  the  sudden  bur- 
geoning forth  of  this  new  Irish  drama  almost  at 
the  behest  of  Lady  Gregory.  But  when  due 
197 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

consideration  is  given  to  the  long  list  of  Irishmen 
who  have  held  their  own  in  the  English  theater, 
there  is  cause  for  wonder  rather  that  Ireland  did 
not  have  a  drama  of  its  own  long  ago.  In  fact 
the  history  of  English  dramatic  literature,  and 
more  especially  the  record  of  English  comedy, 
would  be  sadly  shrunken  if  the  Hibernian  con- 
tribution could  be  cancelled.  We  can  estimate 
the  gap  that  this  operation  would  make  when  we 
recall  the  names  of  George  Farquhar,  Richard 
Steele,  Oliver  Goldsmith,  Richard  Brinsley  Sheri- 
dan, John  O'Keefe,  Sheridan  Knowles,  Samuel 
Lover,  Dion  Boucicault,  John  Brougham,  Oscar 
Wilde,  Bernard  Shaw  and  "George  A.  Birming- 
ham." There  is  food  for  thought  as  well  as  for 
laughter  in  the  saying  that  "  English  comedy  has 
either  been  written  by  Irishmen  or  else  adapted 
from  the  French."  A  harsh  and  cynical  critic 
might  even  go  further  and  add — having  Steele 
in  mind  for  one  and  for  another  Boucicault — 
that  sometimes  English  comedy  has  been  both 
written  by  an  Irishman  and  adapted  from  the 
French. 

It  is  to  English  comedy  that  these  Irishmen 
contributed;  it  is  not  to  Irish  comedy.  The  ad- 
mission may  be  made  that  one  or  another  of 
them  now  and  again  sketcht  a  fellow-countryman 
or  two;  but  before  Lover  and  Boucicault  no  one 
of  these  Irish  dramatists  peopled  a  play  with 
Irish  characters  and  laid  its  scene  in  Ireland. 
198 


IRISH    PLAYS   AND    IRISH    PLAYWRIGHTS 

Altho  they  must  have  known  Ireland  and  the 
Irish  better  than  they  knew  England  and  the 
English,  it  is  to  the  portrayal  of  the  latter  that 
they  gave  their  loving  attention,  neglecting  alto- 
gether the  delineation  of  the  former.  For  some 
reason  they  were  not  tempted  to  employ  their 
talents  at  home  and  to  devote  themselves  to  the 
depicting  of  the  manners  and  customs  of  their 
own  island.  Probably  the  explanation  of  their 
refusal  to  utilize  the  virgin  material  that  lay 
ready  to  their  hands  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact 
that  to  achieve  a  living  wage  they  had  to  write 
for  the  London  theaters,  the  audiences  of  which 
took  little  or  no  interest  either  in  Ireland  or  in 
the  Irish. 

Whatever  the  reason  may  be  why  these  bril- 
liant Irish  playwrights  did  not  write  plays  of 
Irish  life,  there  is  no  denying  that  they  did  not, 
and  that  it  was  left  for  the  contemporary  support- 
ers of  the  Abbey  Theater  to  plow  the  fresh  fields 
which  their  predecessors  had  refused  to  cultivate. 
Even  the  later  English  comic  dramatists  of  Irish 
birth  have  eschewed  themes  fundamentally  Irish 
and  have  rarely  introduced  Irish  characters  into 
their  English  plays;  there  is  not  a  single  Irish 
part  in  all  Oscar  Wilde's  comedies  and  there  is 
only  one  of  Mr.  Shaw's  pieces  the  scene  of  which 
is  laid  in  Ireland.  Irish  novelists,  Maria  Edge- 
worth,  Banin,  Carleton,  Lever  and  Lover,  won 
fame  by  writing  Irish  stories;  but  only  Lover  and 
199 


THE    PRINCIPLES    OF    PLAYMAKING 

Boucicault  wrote  Irish  plays.  The  Irish  drama- 
tists were  all  of  them  working  for  the  London 
market  and  they  were  subdued  to  what  they  workt 
in. 


When  we  consider  the  closeness  of  Ireland  to 
England,  and  the  ease  of  communication  we  can 
only  marvel  at  the  infrequency  with  which  Irish 
characters  appear  in  English  plays.  There  is  no 
Irishman — except  the  slim  profile  of  Captain 
Macmorris  in  'Henry  V — in  all  Shakspere's 
comedies  and  histories  and  tragedies,  altho  there 
are  Scotsmen  and  Welshmen.  Apparently  the 
earliest  Irish  character  in  the  English  drama  did 
not  step  on  the  stage  until  after  the  Restoration 
and  nearly  fifty  years  after  Shakspere's  death. 
This  earliest  Irish  character  was  a  comic  servant, 
called  Teague,  who  appears  in  Sir  Robert  How- 
ard's 'Committee,'  a  play  which  Pepys  went  to 
see  in  June,  1663.  And  apparently  the  second 
Irish  character  was  another  Tegue  in  Shadwell's 
'Lancashire  Witches  and  Tegue  O'Divelly  the 
Irish  Priest,'  a  highly  colored  piece  which  was 
produced  in  1681.  The  first  Teague  was  devised 
to  provoke  laughter,  whereas  the  second  Tegue 
was  intended  to  be  detested  and  despised  as  an 
intriguing  villain.  It  seems  probable  that  this 
portrayal  of  a  Hibernian  scoundrel  by  an  English 
playwright  was   pleasing  to  the   London   play- 


IRISH    PLAYS   AND    IRISH    PLAYWRIGHTS 

goers,  since  Shadwcll  brought  him  forward  again 
a  few  years  later  in  another  play,  the  'Amorous 
Bigot,'  produced  in  1690. 

Then  came  the  first  of  the  native  Irishmen  who 
were  to  brighten  English  comedy  with  their  in- 
genuity and  their  wit,  and  their  grace  and  their 
good  humor — the  first,  and  perhaps  the  most 
gifted  of  them  all,  George  Farquhar.  After  try- 
ing his  wings  in  public  as  an  actor,  an  experience 
which  explains  the  superior  briskness  and  the- 
atrical effectiveness  of  his  plays  over  those  of 
his  immediate  predecessors,  Congreve,  Wycherly 
and  Vanbrugh,  he  went  over  to  London  and  ".com- 
menced playwright."  Yet  he  did  not  draw  on  his 
knowledge  of  his  own  people;  and  in  all  his  plays 
we  find  only  two  relatively  unimportant  and  ab- 
solutely insignificant  Irish  characters.  One  of 
these  is  another  Teague  in  the  more  or  less  success- 
ful 'Twin  Rivals/  produced  in  1705;  and  the 
other  is  an  Irish  priest  in  the  triumphantly  suc- 
cessful 'Beaux'  Stratagem,'  produced  in  1707. 

We  cannot  even  guess  what  Farquhar  might 
have  done  if  he  had  survived,  and  whether  or 
not  he  would  have  drawn  more  richly  upon  his 
recollections  of  his  fellow-countrymen  after  his 
repeated  success  had  given  him  confidence  in 
himself  and  authority  over  the  public.  His 
career  was  cut  short  by  death  before  he  was 
thirty — about  the  age  when  Sheridan  abandoned 
playmaking  for  politics.  It  has  been  noted  that 
201 


THE    PRINCIPLES    OF    PLAYMAKING 

the  novelist  is  likely  to  flower  late  and  often  not 
fully  to  reveal  his  capacity  as  a  creator  of  char- 
acter until  he  is  forty,  whereas  the  dramatist 
may  win  his  spurs  when  he  is  still  in  the  first 
flush  of  youth.  Playmaking  demands  inventive 
cleverness,  first  of  all,  and  dexterity  of  craftsman- 
ship, and  these  are  qualities  which  a  young  man 
may  possess  in  abundance  almost  as  native  gifts, 
even  tho  he  may  not  have  had  time  to  reflect 
deeply  upon  the  spectacle  of  human  folly,  which 
is  the  prime  staple  of  comedy. 

It  is  possibly  because  he  was  an  Irishman  that 
Farquhar's  morality  is  not  ignoble  like  Congreve's 
and  Wycherly's.  He  is  not  to  be  classed  with  the 
rest  of  the  Restoration  dramatists,  as  is  usually 
done.  Farquhar  may  offend  our  latterday  pro- 
priety, now  and  again,  by  his  plain-spoken  speech, 
but  he  is  never  foul  in  his  plotting,  as  are  Wycherly 
and  Congreve,  whom  he  surpasses  also  in  the 
adroitness  of  this  plotting.  His  dialog  can  be 
clensed  by  excision,  whereas  their  dirt  lies  deeper 
and  cannot  be  overcome  by  all  the  perfumes  of 
Araby.  It  is  upon  Farquhar  that  Sheridan 
modelled  himself,  and  not  upon  Congreve  as  has 
often  been  assumed.  The  'School  for  Scandal' 
may  reveal  an  attempt  to  echo  the  wit  of  the 
'Way  of  the  World';  but  its  solid  structure  and 
its  skilful  articulation  of  incident  disclose  a  close 
study  of  the  '  Inconstant,'  the  '  Recruiting  Officer' 
and   the  'Beaux'   Stratagem,'  all  of  them  fre- 

202 


IRISH    PLAYS   AND    IRISH    PLAYWRIGHTS 

quently  acted   when   Sheridan  was  serving  his 
apprenticeship  as  a  playwright. 


Ill 

In  crediting  Farquhar  with  a  finer  moral 
sense  than  Congreve  or  Wycherly,  it  must  in 
fairness  be  noted  that  they  composed  their  more 
important  comedies  before  Jeremy  Collier  had 
attackt  the  rampant  indecency  which  char- 
acterized the  English  comic  drama  at  the  end  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  and  that  Farquhar  came 
forward  as  a  playwright  after  the  non-conformist 
divine  had  cleared  the  air  by  his  bugle-blast. 
The  dramatist  who  took  Collier's  remarks  most 
to  heart  was  Farquhar's  contemporary  and  fellow 
Irishman,  Steele.  But  unlike  Farquhar,  Steele 
decided  to  be  deliberately  didactic.  He  declared 
that  in  his  comedy,  the  'Funeral,*  produced  in 
1701,  altho  it  was  "full  of  incidents  that  move 
laughter,"  nevertheless  "virtue  and  vice  appear 
just  as  they  ought  to  do."  Steele  was  even  more 
ostentatiously  moral  in  the  'Lying  Lover,'  pro- 
duced in  1704  and  withdrawn  ofter  only  a  few 
performances,  its  author  asserting  sadly  that 
the  play  had  been  "damned  for  its  piety." 
Yet  in  neither  of  these  early  comedies,  nor  later  in 
the  'Conscious  Lovers,'  does  Steele  introduce  any 
Irish  character. 

And  we  do  not  discover  any  Irish  character  in 
203 


THE    PRINCIPLES    OF    PLAYMAKING 

either  of  the  comedies  of  OHver  Goldsmith,  the 
'Good-natured  Man,'  produced  in  1768,  and  'She 
Stoops  to  Conquer,'  produced  in  1773.  A  year 
after  this  second  comedy  had  establisht  itself 
as  a  favorite  on  the  stage,  where  it  is  still  seen  with 
pleasure  after  seven  score  years,  Goldsmith  died, 
at  the  comparatively  early  age  of  forty-six.  Here 
again,  it  is  idle  to  speculate  on  what  he  might 
have  achieved  as  a  dramatist  after  the  stage-doors 
had  swung  wide  to  welcome  him.  If  he  had  sur- 
vived, it  is  possible  that  he  might  have  been 
tempted  to  take  a  theme  from  his  native  island 
and  to  treat  it  with  all  his  genial  insight  into  hu- 
man nature,  never  likely  to  be  keener  or  more 
caressing  than  in  dealing  with  his  own  country- 
men. 

Two  years  after  Goldsmith  had  brought  out 
'She  Stoops  to  Conquer,'  Sheridan  brought  out 
the  'Rivals,'  to  be  followed  in  swift  succession 
and  with  equal  success  by  the  '  Duenna,'  the 
'School  for  Scandal'  and  the  'Critic'  Then  he 
forsook  the  theater  for  the  more  temporary  stage 
offered  to  him  by  politics.  In  only  one  of  these 
varied  masterpieces  of  comedy  is  there  an  Irish 
character.  This  single  specimen  is  Sir  Lucius 
OTrigger  in  the  'Rivals,'  easily  the  best  Irish 
part  that  had  yet  appeared  in  any  comedy,  and 
surpast  by  scarcely  any  Irish  character  in  any 
later  play,  English  or  Irish.  Sir  Lucius  is  an 
Irish  gentleman;  he  is  essentially  a  gentleman 
204 


IRISH    PLAYS    AND    IRISH    PLAYWRIGHTS 

and  he  is  intensely  Irish.  Here  was  a  novelty, 
since  most  of  the  few  Irish  characters  already 
introduced  into  English  comedy  had  been  serv- 
ants, first  of  all,  and  secondly  only  superficially 
Irish.  Oddly  enough,  the  bad  acting  of  the  origi- 
nal impersonator  of  Sir  Lucius,  a  performer  named 
Lee,  almost  caused  the  failure  of  the  'Rivals'  at 
the  first  and  second  performances.  The  comedy 
was  then  withdrawn  for  repairs,  and  for  the  re- 
hearsal of  another  actor.  Clinch,  as  Sir  Lucius. 
In  gratitude  to  Clinch  for  the  rescue  of  the  'Ri- 
vals* from  the  doom  that  impended,  Sheridan  im- 
provised for  his  benefit  a  two-act  farce,  called 
'St.  Patrick's  Day,  or  the  Scheming  Lieutenant,' 
a  lively  little  play  of  no  importance,  in  which 
Clinch  appeared  as  the  scheming  lieutenant,  an 
Irishman,  only  superficially  Hibernian. 

It  is  strange  that  the  popularity  of  Sir  Lucius 
and  his  appeal  to  the  public  did  not  lure  the  later 
English  comic  dramatists  of  Irish  nativity  to 
invite  other  characters  over  from  the  island  of 
their  own  birth.  But  we  do  not  recall  any  Irish 
part  in  any  of  the  many  plays  of  John  O'Keefe, 
only  one  of  whose  comedies  'Wild  Oats'  is  ever 
seen  on  the  stage  of  today,  and  then  only  at  in- 
tervals which  are  constantly  lengthening.  Nor 
can  we  recall  any  Irish  part  in  any  of  the  top- 
lofty comedies  of  Sheridan  Knowles,  composed 
partly  in  turgid  prose  and  partly  in  very  blank 
verse,  devoid  all  of  them  of  tl>e  wit  and  the 
205 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

gaiety  and  the  liveliness  which  we  believe  we 
have  a  right  to  expect  from  an  Irish  dramatist. 
Very  Irish  however  are  the  pieces  made  out  of 
the  'Handy  Andy'  and  the  'Rory  O'Moore'  of 
Samuel  Lover;  and  most  characteristically  Hi- 
bernian is  the  lighthearted  hero  of  Lover's  farcical 
little  fantasy  called  the  'Happy  Man.'  That 
these  slight  plays  of  Lover's  represent  almost  the 
only  attempts  to  deal  with  Irish  character  on  the 
English  stage  in  the  earlier  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century  is  the  more  surprizing  since  Miss  Edge- 
worth  had  long  since  disclosed  the  richness  of  the 
material  proffering  itself  to  any  keen  observer 
intimate  with  Irish  conditions.  Walter  Scott,  at 
least,  had  seen  the  value  of  'Castle  Rackrent'  and 
of  the  'Absentee';  and  he  is  on  record  as  confessing 
that  one  of  the  motives  which  urged  him  to  the 
composition  of  'Waverly/  and  of  its  immediate 
successors,  was  the  desire  to  do  for  the  Scottish 
peasant  what  Miss  Edgeworth  had  done  for  the 
Irish  peasant.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  the  most 
popular  of  the  Irish  followers  of  Scott  in  the  writ- 
ing of  tales  of  adventure  was  Charles  Lever,  whose 
earlier  and  more  rollicking  romances  are  happy- 
go-lucky  in  their  plotting,  and  never  disclose 
any  desire  for  significant  character-delineation. 
Lever's  scampering  stories  were  so  loose-jointed 
that  they  were  almost  impossible  to  dramatize, 
and  even  when  they  were  turned  into  plays  they 
did  not  demand  critical  consideration. 
206 


IRISH    PLAYS    AND    IRISH    PLAYWRIGHTS 
IV 

Then  toward  the  end  of  the  first  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century  appeared  the  most  proHfic 
of  all  native  Irish  playwrights,  Dion  Boucicault. 
But  it  was  long  after  he  had  become  a  very 
expert  purveyor  of  theatrical  wares  for  the 
theaters  of  London  and  New  York  that  Boucicault 
turned  to  his  native  island  for  a  theme.  His 
first  play  was  'London  Assurance/a  five-act  comedy 
with  its  scene  laid  in  England  and  with  a  single 
Irish  character.  There  is  a  green-room  tradition 
that  the  play  had  been  put  together  by  another 
young  and  aspiring  Irishman,  John  Brougham, 
that  its  original  title  was  'Irish  Assurance,'  and 
that  the  part  now  called  Dazzle  had  originally 
borne  an  Irish  name,  having  been  intended  by  the 
ambitious  Brougham  for  his  own  acting.  Nearly 
forty  years  ago,  when  I  ventured  to  ask  Brougham 
as  to  this  tradition  and  as  to  his  share  in  the 
composition  of  the  play,  he  laughed  a  little  sadly, 
and  then  gave  me  this  enigmatic  answer,  "Well, 
I've  been  paid  not  to  claim  it  1" 

Whatever  may  have  been  Brougham's  share  in 
the  beginning,  there  can  be  no  dispute  as  to 
Boucicault's  share  at  the  end.  'London  Assur- 
ance' is  not  like  'Playing  with  Fire'  or  any  other 
of  Brougham's  later  plays;  and  it  is  exactly  like 
'Old  Heads  and  Young  Hearts'  and  half-a-dozen  of 
Boucicault's  succeeding  comedies,  the  work  all  of 
207 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

them  of  an  old  heart  and  a  young  head, — hard, 
ghttering,  insincere  and  theatrically  effective. 
In  these  pieces  Boucicault  was  compounding  five- 
act  comedies  in  accord  with  the  traditional  form- 
ula of  the  English  stage,  inherited  from  Sheridan 
and  Congreve,  and  becoming  at  every  remove 
more  remote  from  reality  and  more  resolutely 
artificial.  Altho  one  of  this  early  group  of 
Boucicault's  comedies  was  called  the  'Irish  Heir- 
ess,' they  were  all  English  plays,  with  only  a  rare 
Irish  character.  A  few  years  later,  after  Bouci- 
cault had  become  an  actor  himself,  he  wrote  for 
his  own  acting  a  series  of  pleasantly  sentimental 
Irish  melodramas  stuft  with  sensational  scenery, — 
'Arrah-na-Pogue'  with  its  sinking  wall,  the 
'Shaughraun'  with  its  turning  tower,  and  the 
'Colleen  Bawn'  with  the  spectacular  dive  of  its 
hero  into  the  pool  where  its  heroine  is  drowning. 
The  theatrical  effectiveness  of  these  pieces  was  un- 
deniable and  it  was  rewarded  by  long  continued 
popular  approval;  but  no  one  of  them  had  any 
validity  as  a  study  of  life  and  character  in  Ire- 
land. They  were  very  clever  indeed,  but  they 
were  only  clever;  and  they  but  skimmed  the 
surface  of  life,  never  cutting  beneath  it  to  lay 
bare  unexpected  aspects  of  human  nature.  It 
is  characteristic  that  two  of  the  later  pieces  in 
which  Boucicault  appeared  as  an  Irishman  were 
adaptations  from  the  French,  'Daddy  O'Dowd' 
(from  'Les  Crochets  du  Pere  Martin')  and 
208 


IRISH    PLAYS    AND    IRISH    PLAYWRIGHTS 

'Kerry'  (from  'La  Joie  fait  Peur').  That  he 
could  so  twist  these  French  plots  with  their  for- 
eign motives  as  to  make  them  masquerade  as 
Irish  plays  is  testimony  to  his  incessant  clever- 
ness; but  it  is  evidence  also  that  the  Irish  veneer 
was  so  thin  as  to  be  almost  transparent. 

Yet  however  artificial  and  superficial  might  be 
these  Irish  pieces  of  Boucicault's,  at  least  they 
were  more  or  less  Irish,  in  that  they  pretended 
to  deal  with  Irish  life  in  Ireland  itself.  This  is 
what  no  one  of  the  earlier  Irishmen  writing  plays 
for  the  London  stage  had  ventured  to  attempt; 
and  it  was  what  the  wittiest  Irish  dramatist  of 
the  generation  following  Boucicault's  never  d4d. 
Oscar  Wilde  was  an  Irishman  who  never  toucht 
an  Irish  theme  or  sketcht  an  Irish  character. 
He  never  put  into  his  plays  any  of  the  haunting 
sadness,  the  humorous  melancholy  of  Ireland. 
He  was  not  quite  as  free-handed  as  Boucicault  in 
levying  on  the  private  property  of  his  contem- 
poraries, yet  he  was  willing  enough  to  take  his 
own  wherever  he  found  it.  His  dramatic  methods 
are  derivative,  to  put  it  mildly.  Altho  he  com- 
posed a  '  Duchess  of  Padua'  more  or  less  in  imita- 
tion of  Victor  Hugo  and  a  'Salome'  more  or  less 
in  imitation  of  Flaubert,  the  most  popular  of  his 
plays  are  comedies  of  modern  London  life,  more 
or  less  in  imitation  of  Sardou.  'Lady  Winde- 
mere's  Fan'  is  in  accord  with  the  latest  Parisian 
fashion  of  the  season  in  which  it  was  originally 
209 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

produced;  and  even  the  young  girl's  trick  of  utter- 
ing only  the  same  two  words, — "  Yes,  mamma" — 
in  answer  to  all  questions  is  an  echo  of  Gondinet's 
'Oh,  Monsieur.'  The  more  farcical  comedy  called 
the  'Importance  of  being  Earnest'  is  a  striking 
example  of  Wilde's  imitative  method,  the  first 
act  and  half  of  the  second  act  having  a  closely 
knit  comic  embroglio  such  as  we  find  in  Labiche's 
'Plus  Heureux  des  Trois'  and  'Celimare  le  Bien- 
Aime'  and  the  rest  of  the  piece  being  loosely 
put  together  in  the  whimsical  manner  of  W.  S. 
Gilbert's  '  Engaged/ 

There  is  nothing  in  any  of  Oscar  Wilde's  plays 
to  reveal  his  Irish  birth — unless  we  may  credit 
to  his  nativity  his  abundant  cleverness  and  his 
ready  wit,  the  coruscating  fireworks  of  which 
were  sometimes  exploded  by  an  ill-concealed 
slow-match.  It  is  almost  as  tho  the  apostle  of 
estheticism  recoiled  from  his  native  island  and 
deliberately  refused  to  be  interested  in  his 
fellow-countrymen.  And  almost  the  same  re- 
mark might  be  made  about  a  later  and  far  more 
richly  gifted  English  author  of  Irish  birth, 
Bernard  Shaw.  Of  all  his  score  or  more  plays 
only  one,  'John  Bull's  Other  Island'  is  Irish  in 
its  subject;  and  this  sole  exception,  so  the  author 
himself  tells  us,  was  due  to  the  urgent  request 
of  Yeats,  who  begged  him  to  come  to  the  aid 
of  the  struggling  Abbey  Theater  in  Dublin.  As 
it  happens,  'John  Bull's  Other  Island'  was  never 

210 


IRISH    PLAYS   AND    IRISH    PLAYWRIGHTS 

produced  at  the  playhouse  for  which  it  was  com- 
posed, because,  as  Shaw  confesses,  "it  was  un- 
congenial to  the  whole  spirit  of  the  neo-Gaelic 
movement,  which  is  bent  on  creating  a  new 
Ireland  after  its  own  ideal." 


In  the  United  States,  with  our  scattered  Irish 
contingent,  Boucicault's  Irish  pieces  were  as 
successful  as  they  were  in  Great  Britain.  John 
Brougham,  following  in  Boucicault's  footsteps, 
wrote  plays  to  order  for  Barney  Williams  and 
William  J.  Florence,  cutting  his  cloth  close  to  the 
figure  of  the  special  performer  he  was  fitting.  In 
the  American  variety-shows  a  host  of  Irish  im- 
personators of  both  sexes  presented  broad  carica- 
tures of  Irish  character  often  rooted  in  reality. 
And  here  in  New  York  there  was  developt  out 
of  these  variety-show  caricatures  a  special  type 
of  robust  Irish  comedy,  more  veracious  than  Bou- 
cicault's sentimental  melodramas.  Edward  Har- 
rigan  began  with  a  mere  sketch,  the  'Mulligan 
Guards,'  peopled  with  half-a-dozen  species  of 
Irishmen  acclimated  in  America;  and  as  he  was 
encouraged  by  immediate  appreciation  on  the 
part  of  our  cosmopolitan  and  hospitable  public, 
he  went  on,  feeling  his  way  and  refining  his 
method,  until  he  attained  the  summit  of  his  reach 
in  the  delightful  'Squatter  Sovereignty,'  with  its 

211 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

beautifully  difTerentiated  groups  of  the  clan 
Murphy  and  the  clan  Macintyre.  It  need  not 
be  denied  that  there  were  wilful  extravagances  in 
this  series  of  studies  of  the  New  York  Irishman 
and  that  to  the  very  end  there  were  traces  of 
the  variety-show  out  of  which  this  type  of  play 
had  been  evolved;  but  no  native  Irishman  had 
a  more  realistic  humor  than  Harrigan  nor  a  keener 
insight  into  human  nature. 

Then  we  come  to  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth 
century  and  to  the  founding  of  the  Abbey  Theater 
in  Dublin,  to  the  movement  led  by  Lady  Gregory 
and  adorned  by  the  widely  different  talents  of 
Yeats  and  Synge.  Here  was  at  last  a  new  de- 
parture of  the  Irish  drama  in  Ireland  itself. 
Here  were  plays  of  very  varying  value  and  of 
many  different  kinds,  alike  only  in  this,  that  they 
eschewed  manufactured  bulls;  that  they  did  not 
rely  on  a  varnish  of  paraded  brogue;  that  they 
did  not  deal  in  boisterous  fun-making  for  its  own 
sake, — their  fun  depending  rather  upon  a  subtler 
humor  tinged  with  melancholy;  and  that  they 
were  no  longer  contented  with  an  external  in- 
dication of  superficial  Irish  characteristics,  but 
sought  an  internal  and  intimate  expression  of  the 
essential.  These  new  Irish  plays  were  not  Irish 
by  accident;  they  were  Irish  by  intention,  Irish 
in  character  and  in  action,  Irish  in  motive  and 
in  sentiment,  Irish  thru  and  thru,  immitigably 
Irish. 

212 


IRISH    PLAYS    AND    IRISH    PLAYWRIGUI S 

The  late  Laurence  Hutton  once  defined  an 
American  play  as  a  play  written  by  an  American 
on  an  American  theme  and  carried  on  solely  by 
American  characters;  but  he  had  to  confess  the 
falsity  of  this  definition  when  it  was  pointed  out 
to  him  that  so  rigid  a  demand  would  exclude  from 
the  French  drama  the  'Cid'  of  Corneille,  the  '  Don 
Juan'  of  Moliere,  the  'Phedre'  of  Racine,  and  the 
'Ruy  Bias'  of  Hugo,  while  it  would  also  rule  out 
of  the  English  drama  the  'Romeo  and  Juliet,' 
the  'Hamlet'  and  the  'Julius  Caesar'  of  Shak- 
spere.  Yet  there  is  significance  in  the  sugges- 
tion, nevertheless;  and  these  new  Irish  plays  of 
Lady  Gregory,  of  Yeats  and  of  Synge,  are  all  the 
more  Irish  because  they  were  written  by  Irishmen 
on  Irish  themes  and  peopled  exclusively  by  Irish 
characters. 

(1914.) 


213 


XII 

THE  CONVENTIONS  OF  THE  MUSIC- 
DRAMA 

I 

IN  an  illuminating  criticism  of  the  operas  of 
Puccini,  by  D.  C.  Parker,  there  is  a  passage 
which  may  serve  as  a  text  for  the  present  paper. 
The  British  writer  pointed  out  that  in  'Madame 
Butterfly'  the  Italian  musician  struck  out  a  new 
line  in  his  choice  of  a  theme,  widely  different  from 
those  which  had  hitherto  appealed  to  composers, 
in  that  he  deserted  the  old  world  of  romanticism 
and  of  picturesque  villainy,  preferring,  for  the 
moment  at  least,  a  world  which  is  neither  old  nor 
romantic  and  in  which  the  villainy  is  not  pictur- 
esque. 

"We  breathe  the  air  of  these  times  and  a 
modern  battleship  rides  at  anchor  in  the  bay. 
Opera  is  a  convention  and  a  realization  of  the 
fact  should  throw  some  light  on  the  suitabiHty  of 
subjects.  It  was  not  without  reason  that  Wagner 
insisted  upon  the  value  of  legendary  plots,  and  I 
am  sure  that  it  is  a  reliable  instinct  which  whispers 
to  us  that  there  is  something  wrong  when  Pinker- 
ton  offers  Sharpless  a  whiskey  and  soda.  The 
214 


THE  CONVENTIONS   OF  THE   MUSIC-DRAMA 

golden  goblet  of  the  Middle  Age,  the  love-philter 
of  Wagner,  we  can  cheerfully  accept.  But  a 
decanter  and  a  syphon  break  the  spell  and  cause 
a  heaviness  of  heart  to  true  children  of  the  opera- 
world." 

This  is  sound  doctrine,  beyond  all  question; 
and  yet  Mr.  Parker  based  it  only  upon  a  reliable 
instinct,  without  caring  to  go  deeper  and  to  ask 
why  we  are  willing  to  quaff  a  love-philter  from  the 
golden  goblet  and  why  we  hesitate  to  sip  a 
draught  mixt  before  our  eyes  from  syphon  and 
decanter.  Yet  he  hinted  at  the  reason  for  our 
acceptance  of  the  one  and  for  our  rejection  of  the 
other  when  he  reminded  us  that  "opera  is  a 
convention."  But  it  needs  more  than  a  realiza- 
tion of  this  fact  to  enable  us  to  develop  a  reliable 
instinct  in  regard  to  the  subjects  most  suitable  for 
operatic  treatment.  It  needs  an  inquiry  into 
the  exact  meaning  of  the  word  convention,  as  Mr. 
Parker  here  employed  it.  Perhaps  we  may  at- 
tain to  a  solider  ground  than  that  supplied  by  a 
reliable  instinct  if  we  ask  ourselves  what  is  the 
necessity  of  convention  in  any  of  the  arts,  more 
particularly  in  the  art  of  the  drama  and  most 
particularly  in  the  art  of  opera. 

No  doubt,  these  questions  have  often  been  askt 
and  as  often  answered,  altho  the  responses  have 
not  always  been  wholly  satisfactory.  This  is  no 
bar  to  a  reargument  of  the  case,  even  if  there  is 
no  new  evidence  to  be  introduced.  The  French 
215 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

critic  was  wise  as  well  as  witty  when  he  declared 
that  "everything  has  already  been  said  that  could 
be  said;  but  as  nobody  listened  to  it,  we  shall 
have  to  say  it  all  over  again."  Moreover,  very 
few  of  us  are  conscious  of  the  immense  number 
of  conventions  by  means  of  which  we  save  time 
and  spare  ourselves  friction  in  our  daily  life; 
and  still  fewer  have  taken  the  trouble  to  under- 
stand either  the  necessity  for  these  conventions 
or  the  basis  on  which  they  stand. 

A  convention  is  an  agreement.  In  the  arts 
it  is  an  implied  contract,  a  bargain  tacit  and  taken 
for  granted,  because  it  is  to  the  advantage  of 
both  parties.  In  the  art  of  life  the  spoken  word 
is  a  convention,  and  so  is  the  written  word.  As 
John  C.  Van  Dyke  has  aptly  put  it,  in  the  open- 
ing chapter  of  his  suggestive  discussion  on  the 
'Meaning  of  Pictures,'  when  we  wish  to  convey 
the  idea  of  water  to  a  friend  we  do  not  show  him  a 
glass  of  the  fluid,  we  pronounce  the  word,  which  is 
by  agreement  the  symbol  of  the  thing.  If  we 
write  it  we  use  five  letters,  w-a-t-e-r,  which  bear 
no  likeness  whatever  to  the  thing  itself,  and  yet 
which  bring  it  to  mind  at  once.  "This  is  the 
linguistic  sign  for  water.  The  chemical  sign  for 
it  H2O,  is  quite  as  arbitrary,  but  to  the  chemist 
it  means  water.  And  only  a  little  less  arbitrary 
are  the  artistic  signs  for  it.  The  old  Egyptian 
conveyed  his  meaning  by  waving  a  zigzag  up  or 
down  the  wall;  Turner  in  England  often  made  a 
216 


THE  CONVENTIONS   OF   THE   MUSIC-DRAMA 

few  horizontal  scratches  do  duty  for  it;  and  in 
modern  painting  we  have  some  blue  paint  touched 
with  high  lights  to  represent  the  same  thing. 
None  of  these  signs  attempts  to  produce  the  orig- 
inal or  has  any  other  meaning  than  to  suggest 
the  original.  They  are  signs  which  have  meanings 
for  us  only  because  we  agree  to  understand  their 
meanings  beforehand." 

If  we  do  not  agree  to  accept  the  blue  paint 
toucht  with  high  lights  or  the  few  horizontal 
scratches  as  a  proper  method  of  representing 
water  then  we  deny  ourselves  the  pleasure  of 
marine-painting  and  of  pencil-drawing.  The 
art  of  the  painter  is  possible  only  if  we  are  willing 
to  allow  him  to  contradict  the  facts  of  nature  so 
that  he  may  delight  us  with  the  truth  of  nature 
as  he  sees  it.  In  the  preface  to  his  most  abidingly 
popular  play,  the  'Dame  aux  Camelias/  the 
younger  Dumas  declared  that  there  is  "in  all  the 
arts  a  share,  larger  or  smaller  but  indispensable, 
which  must  be  left  to  convention.  Sculpture 
lacks  color,  painting  lacks  relief;  and  they  are 
rarely  the  one  or  the  other,  in  the  dimensions  of 
the  nature  they  represent.  The  more  richly 
you  bestow  on  a  statue  the  color  of  life,  the  more 
surely  you  inflict  upon  it  the  appearance  of  death, 
because  in  the  rigid  attitude  to  which  it  is  con- 
demned by  the  material  it  is  made  of,  it  must  al- 
ways lack  movement,  which  even  more  than  color 
and  form  is  the  proof  of  life." 
217 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

Still  more  striking  is  the  passage  in  which 
the  late  John  La  Farge  asserted  the  immitigable 
necessity  of  convention  in  these  same  twin-arts 
of  painting  and  sculpture: — "When  I  work  as 
an  artist  1  begin  at  once  by  discarding  the  way 
in  which  things  are  really  done,  and  translating 
them  at  once  into  another  material.  Therein  con- 
sists the  pleasure  that  you  and  I  take  in  the  work 
of  art, — perhaps  a  new  creation  between  us.  The 
pleasure  that  such  and  such  a  reality  gives  me 
and  you  has  been  transposed.  The  great  depth 
and  perspective  of  the  world,  its  motion,  its  never 
resting,  I  have  arrested  and  stopt  upon  a  little 
piece  of  flat  paper.  That  very  fact  implies 
that  I  consider  the  flatness  of  my  paper  a  fair 
method  of  translating  the  non-existence  of  any 
flatness  in  the  world  that  I  look  at.  If  I  am  a 
sculptor  I  make  for  you  this  soft,  waving,  fluctu- 
ating, colored  flesh  in  an  mmovable,  hard,  rigid, 
fixt,  colorless  material,  and  it  is  this  transposition 
which  delights  you;  (as  well  as  me  in  a  lesser 
degree  who  have  made  it).  Therefore  at  the 
very  outset  of  my  beginning  to  aflfect  you  by 
what  is  called  the  record  of  a  truth,  I  am  obliged 
to  ask  you  to  accept  a  number  of  the  greatest 
impossibilities,  evident  to  the  senses,  and  some- 
times disturbing,  when  the  convention  supposed 
to  be  agreed  upon  between  you  and  myself  is 
understood  only  by  one  of  the  two  parties." 


218 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF   THE   MUSIC-DRAMA 


These  quotations  from  La  Farge  and  from 
Dumas  call  attention  to  the  essential  conditions  of 
the  arts  of  painting  and  of  sculpture, — that  the 
artists  do  not  merely  depart  from  reality,  they 
contradict  it  absolutely.  Only  by  so  contradict- 
ing it  can  they  provide  us  with  the  specific  plea- 
sure that  we  expect  from  their  respective  arts. 
The  portrait  painter  has  to  present  the  head  of 
his  sitter  motionless  on  a  flat  surface  and  the 
portrait  sculptor  has  to  present  the  head  of  his 
sitter  motionless  and  without  color,  or  rather  with 
the  uniform  tint  of  his  material,  clay  or  plaster, 
marble  or  bronze.  And  the  public  accepts  these 
greatest  impossibilities  not  only  without  protest 
but  without  any  overt  consciousness  that  they 
are  impossibilities.  The  public,  as  a  whole,  is  not 
aware  that  it  is  a  party  to  an  implied  contract; 
it  is  so  accustomed  to  the  essential  conventions  of 
these  two  arts  that  it  receives  the  result  of  their 
application  as  perfectly  natural. 

In  fact,  the  public  can  scarcely  be  said  to  have 
made  the  tacit  bargain;  rather  has  it  inherited 
the  implied  contract  from  its  remotest  ancestors, 
the  cave-men  who  scratched  profile  outlines  on  the 
bones  of  animals  now  for  centuries  extinct. 
The  public  is  so  accustomed  to  the  methods  of  the 
painters  and  of  the  sculptors  that  when  its  atten- 
tion is  called  to  the  fact  that  it  is  accepting  the 
219 


THE    PRINCIPLES    OF    PLAYMAKING 

greatest  impossibilities  it  is  frankly  surprized 
at  the  unexpected  revelation  and  not  altogether 
pleased.  As  a  whole,  the  public  is  not  curious 
to  analize  the  sources  of  its  pleasures;  it  is  per- 
fectly content  to  enjoy  these  pleasures  without 
question,  as  its  fathers  and  its  forefathers  had 
enjoyed  them  century  after  century.  To 
say  this  is  to  say  that  the  fundamental  conven- 
tions of  painting  and  of  sculpture  have  not  been 
consciously  agreed  to  by  the  existing  public; 
they  have  just  been  taken  for  granted. 

So  in  like  manner  have  the  fundamental  con- 
ventions of  the  drama  and  of  the  music-drama 
been  taken  for  granted,  generation  after  genera- 
tion, altho  they  involve  departures  from  the  fact, 
contradictions  of  the  fact,  impossibilities  (to 
borrow  La  Farge's  exact  word)  quite  as  great  as 
those  which  underly  and  make  possible  painting 
and  sculpture.  Just  as  the  conventions  of  the 
graphic  arts  were  establisht  by  the  cave-dwellers 
who  made  the  first  primitive  sketches  of  the 
mastodon,  so  the  conventions  of  the  dramatic 
arts  were  willingly  accepted  by  the  spectators  of 
the  earliest  dance-pantomime,  more  or  less  spon- 
taneously evolved  to  celebrate  the  coming  of  the 
springtime  or  the  gathering  of  the  harvest. 

All  the  permanent  conventions  of  the  drama 
are  accepted  by  the  public  because  they  are  for  its 
benefit,  to  heighten  its  pleasure,  to  prevent  it 
from  being  bored,  or  even  from  having  its  atten- 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF   THE   MUSIC-DRAMA 

tion  distracted  by  minor  things  not  pertinent  to 
tiie  matter  in  hand.  In  real  hfe  all  stories  are 
straggling;  they  are  involved  with  extraneous 
circumstance;  and  they  continue  indefinitely  into 
the  future  as  they  began  indefinitely  in  the  past. 
The  playwright  arbitrarily  chooses  a  point  of 
departure;  he  resolutely  eliminates  all  accom- 
panying circumstances  and  all  environing  char- 
acters not  contributory  to  the  arbitrary  end  upon 
which  he  has  decided.  He  peoples  his  plot  with 
only  the  characters  absolutely  needed;  and  he 
conducts  his  action  swiftly  from  start  to  finish, 
heaping  situation  upon  situation,  so  as  to  arouse 
and  retain  and  stimulate  the  interest  of  the  spec- 
tators as  the  artificially  compacted  story  moves 
irresistibly  and  inevitably  to  its  climax. 

His  characters  always  make  use  of  his  native 
tongue,  which  is  also  the  native  tongue  of  the 
audience.  In  'Hamlet'  the  Danes  all  speak  Eng- 
lish; in  'Romeo  and  JuHet'  the  Italians  all  speak 
English;  and  in  'Julius  Caesar'  the  Romans  all 
speak  English.  Moreover  they  all  make  use  of 
an  English  that  no  mortal  man  ever  used  in  real 
life,  not  even  Shakspere  himself.  Every  one  of 
them  always  expresses  himself  accurately  and 
adequately,  and  completely,  with  no  hesitancies, 
no  repetitions,  no  fumbling  for  words;  and  every 
one  of  them  apprehends  instantly  and  under- 
stands precisely  everything  that  everyone  else 
may  say  to  him.    All  the  language  used,  whether 

221 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

in  prose  or  in  verse,  is  highly  condensed,  inexor- 
ably compact,  transparently  clear.  There  is 
no  need  to  point  out  that  this  is  a  state  of  lin- 
guistic efficiency  unknown  in  everyday  life,  filled 
with  the  halting  babble  of  a  myriad  of  insignifican- 
cies.  Yet  this  departure  from  reality,  this  con- 
tradiction of  the  fact,  this  impossibility,  is  as- 
sented to  not  only  gladly  but  unthinkingly.  The 
bargain  is  not  consciously  made,  it  is  taken  for 
granted,  partly  because  it  is  for  the  benefit  of 
the  spectators  and  partly  because  it  is  an  ances- 
tral inheritance. 

These  are  all  essential  conventions  of  the 
drama,  without  which  it  could  not  exist.  They 
can  be  found  in  the  plays  of  every  people,  ancient 
or  modern,  civilized  or  savage,  in  the  lofty  trage- 
dies of  Athens,  two  thousand  years  ago,  as  well  as 
in  the  farces  of  Paris  five  hundred  years  ago. 
They  make  possible  the  drama  in  prose,  the 
drama  in  verse,  the  drama  in  song,  and  the 
drama  in  gesture.  They  are  the  fundamental 
conventions  of  the  dramatic  art,  handed  down  by 
tradition  and  certain  to  survive  so  long  as  rnan 
shall  find  delight  in  the  theater,  in  beholding  a 
story  set  on  the  stage  to  be  shown  in  action  be- 
fore his  admiring  eyes.  From  the  beginning 
of  things  the  playwright,  like  the  painter  and  the 
sculptor,  has  always  had  to  ask  his  audience  "to 
accept  a  number  of  the  greatest  impossibilities." 


222 


THE  CONVENTIONS   OF  THE   MUSIC-DRAMA 

in 

While  these  are  all  of  them  permanent  and 
essential  conventions  of  the  drama,  there  are 
others  peculiar  to  the  music-drama  and  to  it 
equally  necessary,  since  without  them  it  could 
not  exist, — indeed  it  could  not  even  have  come 
into  being. 

We  all  know  that  the  ordinary  speech  of  man  is 
prose,  often  careless  and  inaccurate,  ragged  and 
repetitious;  and  yet  if  we  are  to  enjoy  'Hamlet' 
or  'Macbeth'  we  must  accept  the  impossible  sup- 
position that  Denmark  and  Scotland  were  once 
inhabited  by  a  race  of  beings  whose  customary 
speech  was  English  blank  verse.  We  all  know 
that  the  ordinary  speech  of  man  is  unrhythmic 
and  unrimed;  and  yet  if  we  are  to  fmd  pleasure  in 
'Tartuffe'  we  must  allow  that  Paris  in  the  reign  of 
Louis  X IV  was  peopled  by  men  and  women  whose 
customary  speech  was  the  rimed  Alexandrine. 
So  the  convention  which  alone  makes  possible  the 
beautiful  art  of  pantomime — a  form  of  drama  re- 
stricted in  its  range  but  always  delightful  within 
its  rigid  limitations — is  that  there  exists  a  race 
of  beings  who  have  never  known  articulate  speech, 
who  utter  no  sounds,  and  who  communicate  their 
feelings  and  their  thoughts  by  the  sole  aid  of 
gesture.  If  we  are  unwilling  to  assent  to  this 
monstrous  proposition  we  deny  ourselves  in- 
stantly and  absolutely  all  the  pleasure  that  the 
art  of  pantomime  can  bestow. 
223 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

Now,  the  convention  which  supports  and  makes 
possible  the  music-drama  is  that  there  is  a  race 
of  beings  whose  natural  speech  is  song  and  only 
song,  with  no  recourse  to  merely  spoken  words. 
It  is  by  the  aid  of  song  alone  that  the  persons 
who  people  grand  opera  can  communicate  with 
one  another,  can  transmit  information,  can  ex- 
press their  emotions.  Of  course,  this  is  a  prop- 
osition quite  as  monstrous  as  that  upon  which  the 
art  of  pantomime  is  based, — or  as  thoseupon  which 
the  arts  of  painting  and  sculpture  are  founded. 
It  is  a  proposition  which  any  plain  man  of  every- 
day common  sense  is  at  liberty  to  reject  unhesitat- 
ingly; and  no  one  has  any  right  to  blame  him. 
All  we  have  a  right  to  do  is  to  point  out  that  the 
acceptance  of  this  convention  is  a  condition  prece- 
dent to  the  enjoyment  of  opera  and  that  he  who 
absolutely  refuses  to  be  a  party  to  the  contract 
thereby  deprives  himself  of  all  the  delights  which 
the  music-drama  may  afford. 

Tolstoy  was  one  of  those  who  felt  keenly  the 
inherent  absurdity  of  opera,  if  the  test  of  reality 
is  applied  to  it, — altho  oddly  enough  he  seems 
never  to  have  become  conscious  that  painting  and 
sculpture  are  just  as  remote  from  the  facts  of 
nature.  In  his  curiously  individual  treatise  on 
'What  is  Art?'  he  narrates  his  visit  to  an  opera- 
house  while  a  performance  of  Wagner's  'Sieg- 
fried' was  taking  place.  This  music-drama  did 
not  interest  him,  and  he  held  it  up  to  ridicule  by 
224 


THE  CONVENTIONS  OF  THE  MUSIC-DRAMA 

the  aid  of  the  inexpensive  device  of  satirically 
narrating  the  story  as  it  was  shown  in  action,  and 
of  describing  reaHstically  the  appearance  and 
gestures  and  utterances  of  the  performers. 
"When  I  arrived,"  Tolstoy  writes,  "an  actor  sat 
on  the  stage  amid  scenery  intended  to  represent 
a  cave,  and  before  something  which  was  meant 
to  represent  a  smith's  forge.  He  was  drest 
in  tights,  with  a  cloak  of  skins,  wore  a  wig,  and  an 
artificial  beard,  and  with  white,  weak,  genteel 
hands  beat  an  impossible  sword  with  an  unnatural 
hammer  in  a  way  in  which  no  one  uses  a  hammer; 
and  at  the  same  time,  opening  his  mouth  in  a 
strange  way,  he  sang  something  incomprehensi- 
ble." 

This  quotation  is  sufficient  to  show  Tolstoy's 
unsympathetic  attitude  and  his  unwillingness  to 
accept  the  implied  contract  which  opera  calls  for. 
Apparently  Tolstoy  was  present  at  a  performance 
not  as  perfect  artistically  as  it  ought  to  have  been; 
but  it  is  equally  apparent  that  he  would  have 
been  just  as  hostile  if  the  performance  had  at- 
tained to  an  ideal  perfection.  What  he  was  con- 
demning was  the  music-drama  as  an  art-form; 
and  the  animus  of  his  adverse  verdict  is  his  un- 
exprest  expectation  that  opera  ought  to  with- 
stand the  test  of  reality.  But  opera  is  always  un- 
natural and  impossible.  It  is  absurd  and  mon- 
strous that  the  dying  Tristan's  last  breath  should 
be  powerful  enough  to  reach  to  the  top  gallery 
225 


THE    PRINCIPLES  OF   PLAYMAKING 

of  a  large  opera  house  and  that  the  Rhine-maidens 
should  sing  as  they  are  swimming  under  water; 
but  it  is  just  as  unnatural,  impossible,  absurd  and 
monstrous  that  Hamlet  should  speak  English 
blank  verse  and  that  the  Mona  Lisa  should  be 
motionless 

Here  we  recall  again  the  final  sentence  of  the 
pregnant  passage  earlier  quoted  from  La  Farge, — 
"  1  am  obliged  to  ask  you  to  accept  a  number  of 
the  greatest  impossibilities  evident  to  the  senses 
and  sometimes  disturbing  when  the  convention 
supposed  to  be  agreed  upon  between  you  and 
myself  is  understood  only  by  one  of  the  two  par- 
ties." 

IV 

Altho  the  music-drama  cannot  provide  plea- 
sure for  those  who  do  not  understand  the  conven- 
tion or  who  wilfully  refuse  to  accept  it,  "the  true 
children  of  the  opera-world,"  as  Mr.  Parker  feli- 
citously termed  them,  are  so  accustomed  to  this 
convention  that  they  are  rarely  conscious  of  it. 
Nevertheless  they  do  not  wish  to  be  unduly  re- 
minded of  it  and  to  have  their  attention  called 
to  its  various  and  manifold  consequences.  Wag- 
ner was  wise  in  his  generation  in  preferring  to 
build  his  plots  upon  the  legends  of  once-upon- 
a-time,  because  it  is  always  easier  to  make- 
believe  when  we  allow  ourselves  to  be  trans- 
ported on  a  magic  carpet  to  that  remote,  vague 
226 


THE  CONVENTIONS  OF  THE  MUSIC-DRAMA 

and  fantastic  period.  As  we  know  that  the 
Rhine-maidens  never  existed  anywhere  or  any- 
when,  we  never  think  of  cavilHng  at  their  ability 
to  sing  while  they  are  swimming  under  water. 

But  when  a  battleship  swings  at  anchor  and 
when  Pinkerton  produces  a  decanter  and  syphon 
to  mix  a  whiskey  and  soda,  we  can  hardly  help 
being  conscious  of  the  artistic  impossibility  of 
Pinkerton's  extending  his  invitation  in  song, 
which  we  know  not  to  be  the  mode  of  expression 
natural  to  an  American  of  our  own  time  asking  a 
friend  to  take  a  drink.  The  sound  rule  for  any 
artist  would  seem  to  be  that,  whatever  his  special 
art,  he  should  carefully  avoid  everything  which 
tends  to  awaken  in  the  spectators  the  conscious- 
ness that  they  are  parties  to  a  bargain.  The  con- 
tract holds  best  when  it  is  implicit,  when  neither 
party  gives  it  a  thought  and  when  both  parties 
abide  by  it.  "The  dramatist,"  so  Lessing  de- 
clared, "must  avoid  everything  that  can  remind 
the  audience  of  their  illusion,  for  as  soon  as  they 
are  reminded,  the  illusion  is  gone." 

This  is  the  rule  that  William  Gillette  broke  in 
his '  Sherlock  Holmes',  when  he  allowed  one  of  his 
characters  to  describe  the  invisible  fourth  wall 
of  the  gas-chamber  to  which  the  cool  and  keen- 
witted detective  was  to  be  lured, — that  fourth 
wall  which  had  to  be  supposed  away,  so  that  the 
audience  could  hear  and  see  what  is  taking  place 
upon  the  stage.  This  same  rule  was  again  vio- 
227 


THE    PRINCIPLES  OF    PLAYMAKING 

lated  by  Jerome  K.  Jerome  in  the  '  Passing  of  the 
Third  Floor  Back'  and  by  Barrie  in  the  'New 
Word/  when  these  playwrights  set  a  fender  and 
fire-irons  down  by  the  prompter's  box,  thus  ask- 
ing the  spectators  to  believe  that  there  was  an 
invisible  fireplace  in  the  invisible  wall. 

Nearly  a  score  of  years  ago  I  was  present  at  a 
performance  of  'La  Traviata'  in  the  opera-house 
at  Vienna;  and  I  v/as  forced  to  observe  the  dis- 
advantage of  an  ill-advised  attempt  at  realistic  ex- 
actitude in  the  realm  of  operatic  convention.  I 
had  been  accustomed  to  see  Verdi's  opera  set  in 
scenery  of  no  particular  place  and  of  no  particu- 
lar period, — and  therefore  not  calling  attention 
to  itself;  and  I  was  also  used  to  beholding  the 
consumptive  heroine  arrayed  in  the  very  latest 
Paris  gown,  while  her  lovers  wore  a  nondescript 
costume  as  dateless  and  as  characterless  as  the 
scenery  itself.  The  manager  of  the  Vienna  opera- 
house  had  unfortunately  remembered  that  Verdi's 
score  was  composed  to  a  book  made  out  of  the 
'Dame  aux  Camelias'  of  the  younger  Dumas, 
originally  performed  in  Paris  in  1852;  and  there- 
fore he  had  sought  an  accurate  reproduction  of  a 
series  of  Parisian  rooms,  with  the  draperies  and 
the  furniture  of  1852,  while  the  characters,  male 
and  female,  lovely  heroine  and  disconsolate  lovers, 
were  attired  according  to  the  French  fashion- 
plates  of  that  date.  In  the  ballroom  scene  there- 
fore I  beheld  all  the  male  members  of  the  chorus 
228 


THE   CONVENTIONS   OF   THE    MUSIC-DRAMA 

habited  in  the  evening  dress  of  1852  and  carrying 
under  their  arms  the  closed  crush-hat  which  had 
been  invented  by  the  ingenious  M.  Gibus  only  a 
little  earlier. 

And  1  then  had  it  brought  home  to  me  as  never 
before  how  monstrously  impossible  the  convention 
of  opera  is — and  must  be.  I  need  not  say  that, 
as  I  sat  there  in  the  mood  of  unconscious  enjoy- 
ment, I  regretted  having  my  attention  wantonly 
called  to  the  essential  and  permanent  and  inevita- 
ble convention  by  which  alone  the  music-drama  is 
made  possible.  It  struck  me  not  only  as  unwise 
but  even  as  a  little  unfair. 


229 


XIII 

THE  SIMPLIFICATION  OF  STAGE- 
SCENERY 

I 

THIS  is  a  time  of  unrest  in  the  theater.  In 
almost  every  modern  literature  the  drama  is 
aliveas  it  was  not,  half-a-century  ago,  in  any  litera- 
ture except  the  French.  The  public  is  slowly  but 
steadily  recovering  the  lost  art  of  reading  plays; 
and  the  American  public,  in  particular,  is  ex- 
hibiting a  constantly  increasing  interest  in  the 
dramatic  literature  of  other  languages,  not  only 
French  and  German,  but  also  Scandinavian  and 
Russian.  We  are  becoming  more  and  more  cos- 
mopolitan; and  we  welcome  with  equal  cordiality 
the  ballet  of  the  Russians  and  the  pantomime  of 
the  French.  A  host  of  youthful  enthusiasts  have 
opened  little  theaters  not  only  in  the  leading 
cities  but  even  in  some  of  the  less  important 
towns;  and  they  have  made  many  novel  experi- 
ments both  in  the  kind  of  play  they  have  chosen 
to  perform  and  in  the  method  of  presentation. 
These  youthful  enthusiasts  are  abundantly  vocal 
in  clamoring  for  a  new  departure  in  dramatic  art, 
boldly  demanding  the  abolition  of  the  hamper- 
230 


THE   SIMPLIFICATION   OF   STAGE-SCENERY 

ing  traditions  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Some  of 
them  are  ready  to  renounce  the  heritage  of  the 
past,  and  to  venture  into  the  future  as  upon  an 
uncharted  sea.  Not  a  few  of  them  seem  to 
be  possest  by  what  the  late  E.  L.  Godkin  once 
termed  the  "common  illusion  of  young  men  that 
facility  in  composition  indicates  the  existence  of 
thought." 

Gordon  Craig,  for  example,  who  is  hailed  as  one 
of  the  chief  inspirers  of  the  new  movement  in 
stage-decoration,  is  a  very  radical  iconoclast, 
never  concealing  his  profound  dissatisfaction  with 
the  achievements  of  the  stage-directors  of  today. 
Seemingly  he  wants  the  theater  to  declare  its  in- 
dependence of  all  the  other  arts,  even  including 
literature.  At  least  this  appears  to  be  his  desire, 
altho  it  is  not  a  little  difficult  to  find  out  from  his 
manifestoes  exactly  what  it  is  that  he  wishes. 
His  thoughts,  if  not  hazily  held,  are  obscurely 
exprest.  Seemingly,  however,  he  looks  forward 
to  an  isolation  of  the  art  of  the  theater  as  a  result 
of  its  freeing  itself  from  all  entangling  alliances 
and  of  relying  solely  on  its  own  resources. 

If  this  really  is  his  aim,  its  accomplishment 
would  deprive  the  drama  of  the  aid  of  literature 
and  reduce  it  to  pantomime, — which  was,  in- 
deed, its  earliest  and  most  primitive  form.  Now, 
it  ought  to  be  obvious  that  to  force  the  drama 
to  forego  the  aid  of  literature  and  of  all  the  other 
arts,  is  to  make  it  renounce  its  signal  superiority 
231 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

over  all  these  other  arts.  Music  may  invite  the 
companionship  of  lyric  poetry  and  the  dance, 
just  as  architecture  can  enrich  itself  by  invoking 
the  assistance  of  sculpture  and  of  painting.  The 
drama  stands  alone  in  its  ability  to  call  in  the 
collaboration  not  of  one  or  two  of  the  sister 
arts,  but  of  all  of  them, — music  and  the  song  and 
the  dance,  painting,  sculpture  and  architecture, 
even  on  occasion  oratory  and  the  epic.  Wagner 
boldly  proclaimed  that  his  music-drama  was  to  be 
the  art-work  of  the  future,  simply  because  it 
was  to  be  the  result  of  the  cordial  cooperation  of 
all  the  nine  muses.  It  is  because  the  drama  has 
never  been  willing  to  restrict  itself  solely  to  the 
dramatic  that  it  has  achieved  its  surpassing 
breadth  of  appeal. 

But  if  Gordon  Craig  is  not  a  cogent  or  a  co- 
herent thinker,  he  is  indisputably  an  artist  of 
undeniable  originality,  individuality  and  fertility, 
as  1  can  testify  after  a  delightful  London  afternoon 
spent  at  an  exhibition  of  his  beautiful  models.  He 
is  dissatisfied  with  the  accepted  methods  of 
mounting  plays  and  more  especially  with  the 
elaborate  complexity  of  the  realistic  scenery  to 
which  the  stage-directors  of  the  last  two  or 
three  generations  have  accustomed  us.  He 
would  annihilate  both  the  complexity  and  the 
realism,  substituting  a  symbolic  simplicity,  less 
expensive  and  more  effective.  His  designs,  if 
not  always  practical,  have  been  suggestive;  indeed 
232 


THE   SIMPLIFICATION   OF   STAGE-SCENERY 

some  of  those  whom  he  has  inspired  have  been 
able  to  achieve  results  more  satisfactory  than 
any  he  has  himself  attained.  In  fact,  he  is  frank 
in  admitting  that  what  he  proposes  may  not  be 
immediately  practical,  since  his  designs  are  only 
occasionally  adjusted  to  the  actual  theater  of 
today,  some  of  them  being  intended  for  a  type 
of  theater  which  he  foresees,  and  yet  others  for  a 
theater  which  he  glimpses  in  his  mind's  eye  and 
which  is  never  likely  to  be  erected.  That  is  to 
say,  these  impractical  sets  were  invented  for  the 
sheer  delight  of  the  artist  himself  in  their  beauty 
and  not  for  the  benefit  of  future  spectators 
gathered  in  front  of  the  stage  itself. 


II 

This  brings  us  face  to  face  with  two  questions. 
First,  why  are  the  ardent  young  enthusiasts  so 
bitterly  dissatisfied  with  the  complex  and  realistic 
stage-sets  to  which  we  are  accustomed?  And, 
second,  how  did  the  realistic  complication  of  our 
modern  scenery  come  to  be  accepted  all  the 
world  over?  The  latter  had  better  be  answered 
before  the  former. 

The  orchestra  of  the  Greek  theater  was  devoid 
of  scenery  and  so  was  the  wide  and  shallow  stage 
of  the  Roman  theater.  On  the  projecting  plat- 
form of  the  Tudor  theater  there  were  all  the 
properties  that  might  be  needful,  thrones  and 
233 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

beds,  well-heads  and  arbors;  but  there  was  no 
painted  scenery.  In  the  theater  of  Louis  XIV 
there  might  be  scenery  of  a  kind,  summary  and 
decorative,  rather  than  characteristic;  and  the 
acting  took  place  far  in  front  of  the  scenery,  such 
as  it  was,  the  performer  standing  well  for- 
ward between  the  lines  of  spectators  seated  on 
both  sides  of  the  stage  and  keeping  close  under  the 
pendent  chandeliers  that  he  might  be  seen.  Even 
on  the  English  stage  in  the  time  of  Sheridan,  the 
acting  was  done  on  the  apron  curving  forward 
into  the  audience  and  lighted  by  a  semi-circle 
of  inadequate  oil-lamps.  The  characters  of 
Sheridan,  of  Moliere  and  of  Shakspere  stood 
nearly  all  the  time;  and  chairs  were  provided  for 
them  only  on  the  very  rare  occasions  when  the 
plot  of  the  play  required  them  to  be  seated. 

In  the  eighteenth  century  the  novel  had  not 
come  into  its  own;  it  was  held  to  be  so  inferior 
to  the  drama  that  it  escaped  from  the  control  of 
the  codifiers  of  critical  theory.  The  novelists 
had  often  begun  as  dramatists,  Lesage  for  one 
and  Marivaux  for  another;  and  when  they  wrote 
fiction  they  did  not  feel  any  more  called  upon  to 
relate  their  characters  realistically  to  an  appro- 
priate background  than  they  had  done  when  they 
wrote  plays.  It  is  true  that  Defoe  (who  had 
been  a  journalist),  took  keen  delight  in  sup- 
plying all  manner  of  descriptive  details,  yet 
Fielding  (who  had  been  a  playwright),  was 
234 


THE   SIMPLIFICATION   OF   STAGE-SCENERY 

not  tempted  to  follow  him  and  was  content  to 
project  his  characters  almost  in  a  void,  letting 
them  live  and  move  in  rooms  nearly  as  bare  of 
furniture  and  as  uncharacteristic  as  was  the  stage 
of  the  time. 

Scott  changed  all  this;  he  was  the  earliest  of 
historical  novelists;  and  when  he  placed  his 
characters  in  the  remote  past,  he  was  forced  to 
supply  the  familiar  details  of  human  existence  in 
the  period  he  had  chosen  for  his  story.  Scott  had 
to  do  this  necessarily,  if  he  wanted  to  make  his 
readers  realize  life  in  some  earlier  century  about 
which  they  were  likely  to  know  little.  Balzac,  in 
his  turn,  applied  the  same  process  to  the  novel  of 
contemporary  life;  he  described  places  with  in- 
tense gusto,  revelling  in  imagining  all  possible 
particularities  of  the  town,  of  the  house,  and  even 
of  the  room,  in  which  any  one  of  his  more  vital 
characters  resided. 

The  interrelation  of  prose-fiction  and  the 
drama  is  constant;  and  just  as  the  novelists  of 
the  eighteenth  century  had  been  content  with  the 
bareness  to  which  they  were  accustomed  in  the 
theater  of  their  own  day,  so  the  dramatists  of  the 
middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  began  to  de- 
mand appropriate  stage-sets  for  their  intenser 
social  dramas.  "An  acted  play  is  a  novel  intensi- 
fied," said  Henry  James,  "it  realizes  what  the 
theater  suggests,  and,  by  paying  a  liberal  tribute 
to  the  senses  anticipates  your  possible  complaint 
235 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

that  your  entertainment  is  of  the  meager  sort 
styled  intellectual."  The  composers  of  acted 
plays,  who  knew  the  abiding  effect  which  Balzac 
had  achieved  by  the  veracity  of  his  descriptions, 
were  desirous  that  the  scenery  should  reinforce 
the  intellectual  appeal  of  their  writing  by  the  sen- 
sual of  the  things  seen  on  the  stage. 

Fortunately  compliance  with  this  demand  was 
facilitated  by  a  momentous  change  which  took 
place  in  the  playhouse  in  the  years  when  the  realis- 
tic movement  was  carrying  all  before  it.  In  the 
course  of  the  middle  half  of  the  nineteenth  century 
the  actual  stage  underwent  a  transformation. 
It  was  so  amply  lighted  first  by  gas  and  then  by 
electricity,  that  the  actor  had  no  longer  to  go  down 
to  the  footlights  to  let  his  changing  expression  be 
seen.  The  parallel  wings  and  borders  by  means 
of  which  interiors  had  been  crudely  indicated  were 
abolisht  and  the  compact  box-set  enabled  the 
stage-director  to  suggest  more  satisfactorily  an 
actual  room.  The  apron  was  cut  away;  and  the 
curtain  rose  and  fell  in  a  picture-frame.  The 
characters  of  the  play  were  thereafter  elements  in 
a  picture,  which  had  a  characteristic  background, 
and  which  might  be  furnisht  with  the  most  realis- 
tic elaboration.  The  former  intimacy  of  the 
actor  with  the  spectators,  due  to  his  close  proxim- 
ity, disappeared  speedily;  and  with  this  intimacy 
there  disappeared  also  its  concomitant,  the  solil- 
oquy addrest  by  a  character  to  the  audience  for 
236 


THE   SIMPLIFICATION   OF   STAGE-SCENERY 

the  sole  purpose  of  supplying  information.  The 
drama  immediately  became  more  pictorial;  it 
could  rely  more  certainly  upon  gesture;  it  could 
renounce  the  aid  of  purely  rhetorical  oratory; 
it  could  dispense  with  description;  and  it  insisted 
that  the  performer  should  subdue  himself  to 
those  new  conditions  and  to  be  on  his  guard  lest 
he  should  "get  out  of  the  picture." 

This  modification  of  the  physical  conditions  of 
performance,  which  took  place  between  1850 
and  1890,  invited  the  dramatist  to  deal  more 
directly  with  life;  and  it  encouraged  him  to  rely 
more  solidly  upon  the  purely  dramatic,  eschewing 
the  lyric  and  the  epic  and  seeking  solely  to  pre- 
sent character  immesht  in  situation.  It  stimulated 
Ibsen  to  the  acquisition  of  his  masterly  technic 
and  it  supplied  the  stage  best  fitted  for  his  austere 
inquest  upon  human  nature.  Ibsen  was  as  in- 
sistent upon  the  appropriate  environment  for  his 
characters  as  was  Balzac;  and  the  interior  in 
which  he  placed  any  one  of  his  several  groups  is 
always  vigorously  characteristic.  The  set  which 
he  visualized  as  the  fit  background  for  his  creat- 
ures in  the'  Doll's  House' would  not  be  appropriate 
for  those  in  'Hedda  Gabler'  or  for  those  in  'Ros- 
mersholm.'  Each  of  these  plays  has  its  own  dread 
atmosphere,  subtly  indicated  by  significant  de- 
tails. 


237 


THE   PRINCIPLES  OF    PLAYMAKING 
III 

Yet  Ibsen,  even  if  he  was  the  foremost,  was  not 
the  only  outstanding  figure  at  the  beginning  of 
the  twentieth  century.  He  was  companioned  by 
playwrights  as  unlike  as  Rostand  and  Haupt- 
mann  and  d'Annunzio.  Ibsen,  poet  as  he  was 
beyond  all  question,  wrote  prose,  compact  and 
direct;  he  was  a  realist,  altho  he  was  also  often 
a  romanticist  even  in  his  severer  problem-plays. 
Rostand  and  Hauptmann  and  d'Annunzio  are 
rarely  realistic;  more  often  than  not  they  are 
romanticists;  and  above  all  they  are  more 
frequently  poetic.  And  here  we  are  in  sight  of 
an  answer  to  the  question  early  formulated: 
Why  is  there  so  bitter  a  dissatisfaction  with  the 
complex  and  realistic  set  to  which  we  have  slowly 
become  accustomed?  It  is  because  this  set,  suit- 
able for  the  staid  interiors,  wherein  the  action  of 
the  prosaic  problem-play  is  slowly  unrolled  be- 
fore it,  is  less  suitable  for  the  out-door  scenes  of 
avowedly  poetic  plays. 

The  realistic  complexity,  which  elaborates  a 
significant  room  for  the  characters  of  a  social 
drama  rooted  in  fact,  cannot  attain  an  equal 
significance  when  it  seeks  to  reproduce  the  haunt- 
ing landscape  of  a  romantic  play  flowering  out 
of  fantasy.  It  is  appropriate  for  the  'Ghosts'  of 
Ibsen;  but  it  is  not  appropriate  for  the  'Sightless' 
of  Maeterlinck  or  for  the  'As  You  Like  It'  of 
238 


THE    SIMPLIFICATION    OF   STAGE-SCENERY 

Shakspere.  In  a  word,  the  realistic  set  may  be 
exactly  suited  to  plays  of  real  life,  but  it  does  not 
necessarily  suit  plays  of  unreal  life  illumined  by 
the  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land.  Even 
when  'Twelfth  Night'  or  'Much  Ado  About 
Nothing'  is  mounted  sumptuously  and  tastefully 
by  a  stage-director  of  the  liberality,  the  ingenuity 
and  the  interpreting  imagination  of  Sir  Henry 
Irving,  the  result  is  not  commensurate  with  his 
effort;  and  the  effort  itself  is  often  only  too  visi- 
ble. The  semi-medieval  stories  which  Shakspere 
adjusted  to  the  jutting  platform  of  the  Tudor 
theater  and  which  are  plausible  to  us  now  only 
if  we  are  willing  to  make  believe,  have  to  be  taken 
apart  and  then  put  together  again  in  contradic- 
tion and  almost  in  defiance  of  Shakspere's  own 
semi-medieval  construction,  so  that  they  may 
be  made  to  adjust  themselves  to  the  copiously 
pictorial  method  of  our  modern  picture-frame 
stage.  After  this  inartistic  dislocation,  they  are 
likely  to  be  overloaded  with  decorative  details 
not  in  harmony  with  their  delightful  unreality; 
and  the  more  strenuously  the  stage-director 
strives  to  supply  a  realistic  setting,  the  less 
real,  the  less  actual,  is  the  result. 

"Of  pure  poetry  there  are  two  kinds,"  said 
Lord  Dunsany  in  a  preface  for  a  volume  of  a 
friend's  verses;  "that  which  mirrors  the  beauty 
of  the  world  in  which  our  bodies  are,  and  that 
which  builds  the  more  mysterious  kingdoms, 
239 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

where  geography  ends  and  fairyland  begins, 
with  gods  and  heroes  at  war,  and  the  sirens  sing- 
ing still,  and  Alph  going  down  to  the  darkness 
from  Xanadu."  In  the  modern  drama  the  leader 
of  those  whose  works  mirror  the  beauty  of  the 
world  in  which  our  bodies  are,  is  Ibsen;  and  the 
foremost  representative  of  those  who  lay  their 
plays  frankly  in  fairyland  is  Maeterlinck.  It 
was  inevitable  that  there  should  be  a  reaction 
against  the  effort  to  apply  the  method  of  compli- 
cated realism  to  plays  not  compact  with  reality 
but  compounded  of  fancy,  insubstantial  and 
etherial. 

It  was  inevitable  also  that  a  younger  genera- 
tion should  welcome  a  new  departure  for  the  pre- 
sentation of  the  poetic  dramas  of  Shakspere  and 
would  endeavor  to  discover  the  means  for  re- 
capturing something  of  the  simplicity  of  the  orig- 
inal performance,  and  of  avoiding  the  crushing 
and  needless  expense  of  mechanical  realism. 
Inevitably  again  the  ardor  of  the  youthful  leaders 
of  this  revolt  would  tend  to  be  unduly  impatient, 
and  to  be  stimulated  by  an  iconoclastic  fervor 
which  might  tempt  them  to  a  root  and  branch 
reform, — to  a  violent  revolution  instead  of  an 
orderly  evolution.  They  were  eager  to  prove  all 
things  and  yet  they  were  not  always  anxious  to 
hold  fast  that  which  is  true. 

What  was  welcome  in  the  realistic  interiors  of 
the  problem-plays  was  the  congruity  of  the  back- 
240 


THE   SIMPLIFICATION   OF   STAGE-SCENERY 

ground  to  the  temper  and  tone  of  the  play. 
The  set  which  Ibsen  had  visualized  for  his  somber 
'Ghosts'  was  rich  in  character;  it  was  the  fit  en- 
vironment for  his  disenchanted  creatures;  it 
was  absolutely  congruous  with  his  theme;  it 
served  to  intensify  the  appalling  action  of  his 
tragic  story;  and  it  did  these  things  without  in 
any  way  drawing  undue  attention  to  itself.  But 
certain  of  the  sets  which  Gordon  Craig  has  de- 
signed for  one  or  another  episode  of  '  Hamlet'  and 
of  'Macbeth,' — indisputably  beautiful  in  them- 
selves, truly  imaginative,  superbly  decorative, — 
are  not  in  keeping  with  the  atmosphere  of  the 
plays;  they  are  not  unobtrusive  backgrounds; 
in  fact,  they  cry  aloud  to  be  noticed  for  their 
own  sake.  So  it  is  also  with  the  striking  set  which 
he  devised  for  the  '  Electra,'  bold  and  massive,  but 
foreign  to  the  spirit  of  Sophocles,  hopelessly  un- 
Greek,  and  likely  to  distract  the  attention  of  the 
spectators  from  the  dramatist  to  the  decorator. 
As  we  turn  the  pages  of  Gordon  Craig's  'Art 
of  the  Theater,'  delighting  in  the  designs  and 
doing  our  best  to  discover  his  own  convictions, 
we  cannot  avoid  the  suspicion  that  he  holds  the 
decorator  to  be  superior  to  the  dramatist  and 
that  he  believes  the  control  of  the  theater  should 
pass  from  the  playwright-poet  to  the  painter. 
Surely  it  ought  to  be  obvious  that  the  dramatist 
is  the  ultimate  master  of  the  stage  and  that  the 
artists  whose  aid  he  may  invite  must  be  his  ser- 
241 


THE    PRINCIPLES  OF   PLAYMAKING 

vants.  Beauty  of  line  and  of  color  are  in  place 
in  the  theater  only  when  they  contribute  to  the 
emotional  and  intellectual  appeal  of  the  play 
itself;  and  they  are  out  of  place  whenever  they 
are  permitted  to  obtrude  themselves,  to  inter- 
fere with  this  appeal  and  to  detract  from  it. 


IV 

After  the  raising  of  the  banner  of  revolt  against 
the  costly  and  unsatisfactory  realistic  set,  there 
were  many  signs  of  unrest  in  the  theaters  of  many 
countries,  notably  in  those  of  Russia  and  of 
Germany.  Stage-directors  of  varying  ability 
ventured  upon  all  sorts  of  interesting  experi- 
ments. Some  of  these  novelties  approved  them- 
selves immediately  and  won  acceptance  as  tend- 
ing toward  the  development  of  a  more  satisfac- 
tory mode  of  presenting  the  poetic  drama;  but 
some  of  them  were  abhorrent,  being  incited  ap- 
parently by  an  egotistic  desire  to  be  different  at 
all  costs,  to  be  eccentric  or  even  to  be  frankly 
freakish.  We  find  ourselves  in  a  period  of  transi- 
tion; and  while  we  are  justified  in  looking  forward 
hopefully,  we  cannot  now  clearly  descry  the  goal 
at  the  end  of  the  winding  path  upon  which  we 
have  entered. 

But  we  know  our  point  of  departure,  even  if  we 
cannot  yet  foresee  where  we  shall  arrive  or  when; 
and  already  can  we  find  full  justification  for  the 
242 


THE   SIMPLIFICATION   OF   STAGE-SCENERY 

reaction  against  the  persistent  practice  of  sup- 
plying complicated  realism  for  plays  the  action 
of  which  does  not  take  place  in  the  realm  of  real- 
ity. There  was,  for  example,  a  noble  dignity  in 
the  bold  archway  wherewith  Sam  Hume  indicated 
the  city-gate  for  a  Detroit  production  of  Lord 
Dunsany's  'Tents  of  the  Arabs,'  a  design  which 
had  a  distinct  beauty  of  its  own  but  which  was 
also  absolutely  in  keeping  with  the  spirit  of  the 
play, — altho  a  hypercritic  might  regret  that  the 
arch  itself  was  Roman  rather  than  Arabic  or 
even  vaguely  oriental.  Quite  as  effective  in  its 
stark  simplicity  was  the  lovely  scene  designed  by 
Hamilton  Bell  for  the  'Sister  Beatrice'  of  Maeter- 
linck when  it  was  produced  by  Winthrop  Ames 
at  the  New  Theater, — a  medieval  entrance-hall, 
devoid  of  all  distracting  detail  and  provided  with 
a  tall  door  at  the  back,  ready  to  open  once  to 
reveal  the  dark  sky  with  its  stars  shining  down 
on  the  stalwart  figure  of  the  lover  come  to  carry 
off  the  enamored  nun. 

A  like  feeling  for  the  fitness  of  things,  for  the 
delicately  artistic  adjustment  of  the  setting  to  the 
soul  of  the  play,  was  discoverable  also  in  the 
two  contrasting  scenes  which  Winthrop  Ames 
caused  to  be  prepared  for  that  enchanting  pan- 
tomime 'Pierrot  the  Prodigal.'  One  of  these 
sets  represented  the  unpretentious  home  from 
which  the  erring  son  goes  forth  and  to  which 
he  returns  at  last  with  a  broken  and  a  contrite 
243 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

heart, — a  low  ceilinged  room,  summarily  yet 
adequately  indicated  with  only  the  furnishings 
necessary  to  the  action;  and  the  other  set,  equally 
successful  in  its  significance,  was  the  temporary 
abode  of  the  prodigal  when  he  has  yielded  to  the 
lure  of  the  lady  of  pleasure, — a  loftier  room, 
seemingly  more  spacious,  sumptuously  extrava- 
gant in  its  ornament  and  yet  achieving  a  char- 
acter of  its  own  without  the  aid  of  a  clutter  of 
insignificant  details. 

The  names  of  the  personages  and  the  final 
flourish  of  the  tricolor  flag  when  the  drums  rattle 
past  and  the  fifes  shrill  out,  inform  us  that  the 
action  of  *  Pierrot  the  Prodigal*  must  be  supposed 
to  take  place  Somewhere  In  France;  and  it  is 
also  somewhere  in  France  that  a  certain  Man  mar- 
ried a  Dumb  Wife.  The  vicissitudes  of  his 
misadventure  were  narrated  by  Rabelais  four 
hundred  years  ago  and  they  were  only  recently 
cast  into  dialog  by  Anatole  France;  yet  the  in- 
felicitous wedding  did  not  happen  in  the  twentieth 
century  or  in  the  sixteenth,  but  in  the  dim  and 
distant  epoch  known  as  Once  upon  a  Time. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  consequences  of  this 
marriage  are  so  fantastic,  so  completely  removed 
from  the  restraints  of  reality,  that  we  cannot 
help  knowing  that  they  never  did  happen  any- 
where or  anywhen, — a  knowledge  which  in  no 
wise  interferes  with  our  enjoyment.  For  this 
inconsequent  impossibility  Robert  E.  Jones 
244 


THE   SIMPLIFICATION    OF    STAGE-SCENERY 

invented  a  singe  set,  at  once  exterior  and  in- 
terior, charming  in  color  and  playful  in  design, 
perfectly  n  accord  with  the  tricksy  comicality 
of  the  play  and  reinforcing  the  humorous  unreal- 
ity of  the  story.  No  such  house  as  that  which 
we  were  invited  to  gaze  upon  had  ever  been  built 
by  the  hand  of  man;  and  yet  we  accepted  it 
instantly  as  the  only  possible  habitation  for  the 
Man  and  for  his  Dumb  Wife.  In  fact,  this  com- 
pletely satis!"actory  setting  was  designed  in  per- 
fect accord  with  the  principle  this  artist  has  him- 
self declared :  "  Scenery  isn't  there  to  be  lookt  at, 
it's  really  there  to  be  forgotten.  The  drama  is 
the  fire,  the  scenery  is  the  air  that  lifts  the  fire 
and  makes  it  bright." 

The  Rabelais-France  farce  was  produced  in 
New  York  by  Granville  Barker,  and  it  was  by  far 
the  most  successful  of  his  experiments,  several 
of  which  were  a  little  too  regardless  of  traditional 
methods  and  a  little  too  idiosyncratic  in  their 
insistence  on  novelty  for  its  own  sake.  The 
set  of  the '  Dumb  Wife'  did  not  attract  attention  to 
itself,  whereas  in  the  same  manager's  production 
of  'A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream'  both  the 
scenes  and  the  costumes  shriekt  aloud,  because 
they  seemed  to  American  audiences  out  of  keep- 
ing with  the  spirit  of  Shakspere's  fairy  fantasy. 
The  same  criticism  would  have  to  be  past  on 
the  powerfully  projected  backgrounds  which 
were  prepared  by  Golsovine  for  a  Russian  produc- 
245 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

tion  of  the  'Festin  de  Pierre'  and  which  were  not 
consonant  with  the  restrained  tone  of  Mohere's 
version  of  the  Don  Juan  story,  aitho  they  might 
have  been  in  place  if  used  to  adorn  the  lyric 
melodrama  of  Tirso  de  Molina,  the  remote 
original  of  Moliere's  piece. 


In  the  immediate  future  it  is  probable  that  the 
poetic  drama,  Shakspere's  or  Maeterlinck's,  will 
be  presented  in  our  theaters  far  less  realistically 
and  far  less  expensively.  We  shall  no  longer 
expect  a  spectacle  as  glittering,  as  costly  and  as 
cumbrous  as  the  reproduction  of  Paul  Veronese's 
'Marriage  at  Cana'  which  Augustin  Daly  be- 
stowed upon  the  final  act  of  the  'Taming  of  the 
Shrew.'  It  is  also  probable  that  this  simplifi- 
cation, this  renunciation  of  ultra-realism,  this 
substitution  of  indication,  summary  but  ade- 
quate, for  actual  representation,  may  in  time 
affect  even  the  mounting  of  modern  plays  in 
prose.  This  will  not  necessarily  prove  to  be  an 
improvement.  A  British  critic  once  found  fault 
with  Ibsen  because  he  used  the  fittest  words 
and  not  the  most  beautiful;  and  Ibsen  insisted  on 
the  fittest  backgrounds  for  his  social  dramas, 
and  not  the  most  beautiful.  In  the  mounting  of 
the  modern  problem-play  what  is  essential  is  not 
beauty  for  its  own  sake,  but  character. 
246 


THE    SIMPLIFICATION    OF    STAGE-SCENERY 

There  is  always  danger  that  the  effort  to' 
achieve  the  characteristic  may  over-reach  itself 
with  disastrous  results.  In  a  letter  to  Sarcey  on 
the  art  of  stage-management  Dumas  fils  recorded 
his  preference  for  a  very  simple  interior  with  as 
little  furniture  as  possible,  all  in  neutral  tones, 
against  which  the  personages  would  stand  out  in 
vigorous  relief;  and  he  was  not  at  all  pleased 
with  the  single  set  which  Montigny  devised  for 
the  three  acts  of  'Monsieur  Alphonse.'  As  the 
action  took  place  in  the  country-house  of  a 
retired  naval  officer,  the  manager  imagined  a 
room  with  an  exotic  decoration  vaguely  Chinese 
and  with  bamboo  furniture,  most  of  which  was 
painted  a  brilliant  red.  "The  effect  was  original 
and  gay,  when  the  stage  was  empty;  but  none 
the  less  it  suggested  a  bird-cage  .  .  .  and  one 
was  moved  to  wonder  whether  the  persons  of  the 
play  would  not  sooner  or  later  begin  to  hop  from 
perch  to  perch." 

Dumas,  a  born  playwright,  demanded  always 
that  the  decorative  should  be  subordinate  to  the 
dramatic.  "  If  we  insist  on  being  original,  and 
on  being  different,  we  are  in  imminent  danger  of 
being  eccentric  and  of  bringing  about  an  antagon- 
ism between  the  subject  of  the  play  and  its 
scenery."  It  was  this  unfortunate  desire  to  be 
original  and  to  be  different  which  recently  mis- 
led an  American  manager  into  entrusting  a  New 
York  house-decorator  with  the  designing  of  the 
247 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

successive  sets  for  the  'New  York  Idea.'  Lang- 
don  Mitchell's  heroine  in  the  first  act  is  about  to 
marry  into  a  family  of  hereditary  dulness;  and 
being  herself  a  delightfully  lively  person,  she  re- 
turns, in  the  last  act,  to  the  husband  she  has 
divorced.  But  the  uninspired  house-decorator 
did  not  provide  the  opening  act  with  an  interior  of 
transcendent  respectability  nor  did  he  bestow 
upon  the  closing  scene  an  interior  of  contrasting 
levity.  There  was  not  actual  antagonism  be- 
tween the  subject  of  the  play  and  its  scenery, 
but  there  was  certainly  no  harmony.  The  in- 
teriors were  in  no  wise  characteristic  of  the 
persons  who  were  supposed  to  live  in  them;  in  fact 
the  only  character  that  they  had  was  that  of  the 
house-decorator's  own  shop. 

No  such  blunder  was  made  by  David  Belasco 
in  the  single  set  of  the  '  Return  of  Peter  Grimm' — 
perhaps  the  most  extreme  example  of  realistic 
complexity,  with  its  unending  details,  all  charac- 
teristic, all  unobtrusive  and  all  congruous  with 
the  topic  of  the  play.  The  room  which  the 
author-manager  set  before  us  is  the  room  in 
which  Peter  Grimm  would  live;  it  is  the  house 
in  which  he  would  die;  and  it  is  the  home  to 
which  he  would  return  after  death.  The  at- 
mosphere of  the  whole  dwelling,  as  we  breathe 
it,  is  in  perfect  accord  with  the  appealing  per- 
sonality of  the  forlorn  ghost.  To  simplify  this 
set  would  be  to  deprive  it  of  the  value  given 
248 


THE    SIMPLIFICATION    OF    STAGE-SCENERY 

to  it  by  the  intuition  and  the  dexterity  of  its 
designer. 

Yet  Belasco,  ahvays  alert  to  perceive  the  possi- 
bilities of  every  new  development  in  the  art 
of  the  stage,  has  more  recently  bestowed  upon 
'Marie-Odile'  a  very  simple  setting  in  accord 
with  its  simpler  theme;  and  so  dexterously  did 
he  select  the  sparse  elements  of  this  rarer  and  less 
encumbered  scene,  that  there  was  no  diminu- 
tion in  the  pictorial  support  of  the  story,  in 
both  cases  Belasco  workt  in  obedience  to  the 
unchanging  law  which  declares  that  it  is  the 
perfection  of  a  woman's  dress  to  make  its  wearer 
look  her  best  without  in  any  way  attracting  at- 
tention to  itself. 

The  dominating  principle  in  putting  a  drama 
on  the  stage  is  plain  enough.  Every  play  ought 
to  be  provided  with  the  specific  background 
which  will  best  serve  to  bring  out  its  own  special 
quality.  A  brilliant  comedy  of  modern  society 
like  Clyde  Fitch's  'Truth'  will  call  for  a  scenic 
investiture  more  complex  than  would  be  appro- 
priate for  a  fleeting  episode  like  Lady  Gregory's 
'  Rising  of  the  Moon.' 

It  is  not  often  that  the  author  himself  is  as 
willing  to  leave  the  choice  of  method  to  the  pro- 
ducer as  Echegaray  disclosed  himself  to  be  in 
the  directions  prefixt  to  his  one-act  piece,  the 
'Street  Singer': — "The  stage  represents  a  square 
or  a  street.  There  may  or  may  not  be  trees; 
249 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

there  may  or  may  not  be  seats;  there  may  or  may 
not  be  Hghted  lamps.  The  only  thing  which  is 
essential  is  the  wall  of  a  house  facing  the  spectators 
so  that  the  Beggars  and  the  Singer  may  take  their 
places  against  it.    The  time  is  night." 

(1918.) 


250 


XIV 

THE  VOCABULARY  OF  THE  SHOW- 
BUSINESS 


EVERY  art  has,  and  has  to  have,  its  own 
special  and  highly  specialized  vocabulary, 
ample  for  its  own  needs  and  therefore  abounding 
in  words  and  terms  and  phrases,  often  startlingly 
strange  to  those  who  are  unfamiliar  with  the 
technicalities  devised  by  its  practitioners.  The 
electricians,  for  example,  make  use  of  a  heterogeny 
of  vocables  unknown  to  the  profane  and  sometimes 
fearfully  and  wonderfully  made.  I  recall  that  I 
once  saw  in  an  electrical  weekly  an  advertisement 
asserting  the  superiority  of  the  manufacturer's 
"separately  excited  boosters";  and  when  I  con- 
sulted an  electrical  expert  he  informed  me  that 
these  were  very  useful  machines  and  that  their 
name  exactly  described  their  purpose.  This 
explanation  did  not  lift  me  out  of  my  ignorance; 
but  when  it  was  too  late  to  retaliate  I  wondered 
whether  I  could  not  have  had  him  at  an  equal 
disadvantage  if  I  had  askt  him  if  he  knew  what 
a  star-trap  was  or  a  taking-piece,  a  run-down  or  a 
baby-spot.  I  think  that  he  would  have  been  as 
251 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

much  puzzled  by  these  terms,  well-known  to  all 
who  are  wont  to  pass  thru  the  stage-door,  as  I 
was  bewildered  by  the  excitability  of  boosters. 

The  theater  has  an  elaborate  terminology  of  its 
own,  completely  adequate  to  its  manifold  necessi- 
ties, and  as  precise  in  its  meaning  and  as  accurate 
in  its  application  as  the  vocabulary  of  any  of  the 
sciences.  To  the  outsider  the  technicalities  of  the 
stage  are  likely  to  be  as  mysterious  as  those  of 
any  other  department  of  human  activity, — as 
mysterious  and  as  misleading.  A  star-trap,  for 
example,  is  not  intended  for  the  sole  use  of  a  star  ; 
on  the  contrary  it  is  a  mechanical  device  the 
obvious  dangers  of  which  no  star  would  ever  be 
called  upon  to  risk.  A  baby-spot  carries  with  it 
no  suggestion  that  a  stage  infant  is  about  to  break 
out  with  the  measles;  and  a  run-down  does  not 
imply  that  anybody  is  in  need  of  medical  treat- 
ment. Nor  has  a  raking-piece  anything  what- 
ever to  do  with  gardening. 

In  the  prosaic  eighteenth  century,  it  was  held 
to  be  good  form  in  speaking  and  in  writing  to  use 
general  terms  so  far  as  possible  and  to  avoid  the 
use  of  specific  technicalities.  But  in  our  more 
imaginative  twentieth  century  we  relish  the  exact 
word  and  we  delight  in  employing  it  with  ab- 
solute scientific  precision.  Rudyard  Kipling  re- 
vealed himself  as  a  man  of  his  own  time  when 
he  made  use  of  the  special  terms  of  engineering, 
as  he  did  in  prose  in  '007'  and  in  verse  in  '  M'An- 
252 


THE   VOCABULARY   OF   THE    SHOW-BUSINESS 

drevvs'  Hymn.'  Perhaps  no  other  of  our  poets 
and  story-tellers  has  gone  so  far  in  this  direction 
as  Kipling;  and  yet  many  of  them  are  tending 
that  way,  to  the  constant  enrichment  of  our  every- 
day speech  as  this  is  necessarily  replenisht  from 
the  highly  specialized  vocabularies  of  the  several 
arts  and  sciences. 

It  is  not  uncommon  to  hear  the  technicalities 
of  the  theater  contemptuously  thrust  aside  as 
merely  the  slang  of  the  stage.  Now,  no  doubt, 
the  stage  has  its  slang;  indeed,  there  is  no  deny- 
ing that  stage-folk  are  plentifully  supplied  with 
the  fleeting  phrases  which  may  fairly  be  dis- 
mist  as  slang.  But  none  the  less  has  the  theater 
a  vocabulary  of  its  own,  as  rigid  in  its  meaning 
and  as  legitimate  in  its  usage  as  the  vocabulary 
of  electricity  or  of  architecture.  No  one  is  jus- 
tified in  denouncing  baby-spot  and  star-trap, 
raking-piece  and  run-down  as  specimens  of 
merely  ephemeral  slang.  These  terms  have  a 
scientific  precision  as  indisputable  as  horse-power 
or  foot-ton  or  kilo-watt;  they  are  as  necessary 
and  they  are  as  deserving  of  collection  and  of 
definition  as  the  terms  of  painting  or  of  sculpture, 
of  chemistry  or  of  medicine. 

It  is  a  curious  thing  that  these  technicalities 
of  the  theater  are  only  a  few  of  them  to  be  found 
even  in  the  largest  and  most  comprehensive  of 
the  dictionaries  of  the  English  language;  and  it 
is  even  more  curious  that  they  have  never  been 
253 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

assiduously  selected  and  set  in  order  in  a  subordi- 
nate dictionary  of  their  own.  Similar  vocabularies 
have  been  prepared  for  the  art  of  painting,  for 
example,  and  for  the  science  of  medicine;  and  an 
ample  proportion  of  the  specific  terms  of  painting 
and  of  medicine  have  been  included  in  the  larger 
dictionaries  of  the  language  as  a  whole.  It  is 
to  be  hoped  that  some  man  of  letters,  some  jour- 
nalist intimately  acquainted  with  the  things  of  the 
theater,  may  some  day  be  moved  to  undertake 
the  task  of  preparing  a  stage-glossary,  of  collect- 
ing and  of  defining  the  vocabulary  of  the  arts  of 
the  stage — playwriting,  acting,  scene-painting, 
stage-management. 

II 

The  task  will  prove  to  be  more  arduous  and 
more  onerous  than  would  appear  at  first  sight, 
since  it  ought  not  to  be  limited  to  the  theater 
itself  but  should  be  made  to  include  also  the 
special  vocabularies  of  all  the  other  departments 
of  the  show-business,  not  only  pantomime  and 
dancing,  but  the  circus  and  negro-minstrelsy,  the 
variety-show  and  the  moving-picture.  Each  of 
these  departments  of  the  show-business  has  words 
and  phrases  of  its  own,  many  of  them  more  or  less 
unknown  in  the  others  and  all  of  them  needing 
explanatory  definition.  We  want  to  be  able  to 
turn  to  this  glossary  for  the  precise  description  of 
Leotard-body,  for  example,  and  of  Risley-ad. 
254 


THE    VOCABULARY   OF   THE    SHOW-BUSINESS 

We  shall  be  glad  to  have  an  exact  explanation  of 
the  circus-act  known  as'Tete  Jenkins," — most  hu- 
morously described  by  Mark  Twain  in  'Huckle- 
berry Finn.'  And  how  many  of  us  know  what 
a  iranka  is  or  how  the  haioute  of  the  circus  differs 
from  the  springboard  of  the  gymnasium?  We 
may  be  able  to  guess  at  the  meaning  of  hig  top, 
and  of  canvas-man;  we  may  hazard  a  conjecture 
as  to  the  exact  significance  of  giant-swing  and  of 
muscle-grind ;  but  not  a  few  of  us  would  grope  in 
the  dark  vainly  if  we  were  suddenly  asked  for 
an  explanation  of  lashells  (which  are  the  ropes 
making  taut  the  rod  wherefrom  a  trapeze  is 
suspended).  Then  there  is  mechanic,  which  the 
outsider  recognizes  as  a  name  applied  to  a  human 
being  and  which  the  circus  insider  knows  as  the 
name  of  a  machine  used  in  the  training  of  riders 
for  the  ring. 

However  outlandish  these  terms  may  seem  to 
those  inexperienced  in  the  life  led  by  the  itin- 
erant tent-dwellers,  they  are  so  familiar  and  so 
usual  to  the  circus  man  that  he  would  probably 
be  surprised  to  learn  that  they  were  unfamiliar 
to  the  immense  majority  of  mankind  who  are 
only  spectators  of  the  sports  of  the  arena  and  not 
participants  therein.  Altho  the  circus  has  a  host 
of  these  special  terms,  perhaps  more  than  any 
other  subdivision  of  the  show-business  except  the 
theater  itself,  other  subdivisions  have  also  their 
full  share.  While  the  vogue  of  the  circus  reveals 
255 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

no  sign  of  diminishing,  the  popularity  of  negro- 
minstrelsy  has  undergone  an  eclipse  in  recent 
years.  Half-a-century  ago  there  were  two  dozen 
or  two  score  troupes  touring  the  country  season 
after  season,  whereas  there  are  now  fewer  than 
half-a-score  and  perhaps  even  fewer  than  a  scant 
half-dozen. 

No  longer  does  the  big  drum  invite  us  to  "  40. 
Count  them.  40"  and  very  rarely  do  we  listen 
to  the  preliminary  request  of  the  middleman: 
"Gentlemen,  be  seated  !"  Only  occasionally  now 
do  we  see  the  the  semi-circle  of  burnt-cork  counte- 
nances with  the  unfailingly  dignified  interlocutor 
in  the  center  and  with  Bones  and  Tambo  at  the 
extremities.  Here  in  the  United  States,  where 
negro-minstrelsy  was  bom,  Bones  and  Tambo  are 
known  as  end-men,  whereas  in  Great  Britain,  to 
which  the  black-face  entertainment  was  trans- 
ported early  in  its  career,  they  are  always  called 
corner-men.  Not  often  now  does  the  First  Part 
end  with  the  accustomed  walk  around;  and  only 
infrequently  in  these  days  is  the  Second  Part 
described  as  an  olio.  Still  rarer  is  our  oppor- 
tunity to  behold  the  break-down,  rendered  more 
difficult  and  more  amazing  by  the  use  of  flappers, 
or  to  gaze  delighted  on  a  statue  clog-dance,  with 
its  rhythm  tinklingly  accentuated  by  the  em- 
ployment of  clinkers.  Vanisht  also  is  the  street 
parade  which  made  it  necessary  that  the  play- 
ers of  the  stringed  instruments  should  be  able 
256 


THE    VOCABULARY   OF   THE   SHOW-BUSINESS 

to  double   in  brass,   as   the  advertisements   in- 
sisted. 

Ill 

The  picturesqueness  of  the  vocabulary  of  the 
circus  and  of  the  minstrel-show  is  undeniable; 
and  those  of  us  who  are  keenly  interested  in  the 
multiform  developments  of  the  English  language 
cannot  fail  to  regret  that  this  vocabulary  has  not 
received  from  the  lexicographers  the  attention  it 
deserves.  Probably  the  most  obvious  reason  for 
their  neglect  is  their  ignorance  of  its  existence. 
The  most  obvious  of  reasons  for  their  ignorance 
is  that  the  technical  terms  of  the  several  sub- 
divisions of  the  show-business  do  not  often  find 
themselves  set  down  in  black  and  white.  They 
exist  and  they  survive  by  word  of  mouth  only; 
and  there  is  rarely  any  actual  need  to  write  them 
down.  Even  when  they  may  get  themselves 
written  out,  this  is  likely  to  be  only  in  a  tem- 
porary list  drawn  up  by  a  prompter  or  a  stage- 
manager.  Of  course,  they  are  freely  employed 
in  the  friendly  letters  of  the  stage-folk  one  to 
another.  But  these  letters  and  these  lists,  when 
they  have  served  their  immediate  purpose,  are 
very  unlikely  to  get  into  print  or  even  to  be  pre- 
served. 

Not  often  actually  written,  the  technicalities 
of  the  theater  even  less  frequently  appear  on  the 
printed  page  where  they  might  chance  to  meet 
257 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

the  eye  of  the  dictionary-maker.  Doubtless, 
there  are  a  host  of  stage-terms  which  have  been 
used  orally  for  years  without  ever  finding  them- 
selves in  print.  Thus  it  is  that  they  have  never 
had  a  chance  to  excite  the  curiosity  of  the  lexi- 
cographers. The  vocabularies  of  engineering  and 
of  medicine  are  preserved  in  the  many  text-books 
constantly  pouring  from  the  press  for  the  benefit 
of  the  students  of  these  two  arts;  and  so  it  is 
that  they  are  brought  to  the  attention  of  the  alert 
scouts  of  linguistic  research,  always  desirous  of 
multiplying  the  number  of  new  words  to  be  in- 
cluded in  the  newest  editions  and  in  the  latest 
supplements  of  their  dictionaries.  But  no  college 
has  yet  been  tempted  to  give  a  course  in  stage- 
craft; and  there  are  no  technical  schools  requiring 
text-books  for  the  instruction  of  novices  in  the 
various  branches  of  the  show-business.  There  are 
examinations  for  the  license  to  practise  law  and 
medicine;  but  admission  to  all  the  departments 
of  the  show-business  is  free.  The  stage-door 
stands  open  to  all,  no  diploma  being  demanded 
from  actor  or  acrobat,  dancer  or  pantomimist. 

It  is  true  that  the  vocabulary  of  the  show- 
business  is  necessarily  employed  more  or  less  by 
writers  of  fiction  when  they  venture  to  take  their 
heroes  and  their  heroines  from  among  the  show- 
folk.  But  the  novelists  who  have  chosen  to  deal 
with  life  behind  the  scenes  are  rarely  equipt  with 
an  intimate  knowledge  of  that  dim  region  and 
258 


THE   VOCABULARY   OF   THE   SHOW-BUSINESS 

they  are  not  likely  to  feel  themselves  called  upon 
to  present  the  everyday  details  of  the  theatrical 
career  with  the  aid  of  the  special  vocabulary  of 
the  stage.  1  suppose  that  I  must  have  read  at 
least  a  hundred  stories  of  theatrical  life,  long  and 
short ;  and  I  doubt  if  there  could  be  gleaned  from 
them  all  more  than  half-a-hundred  of  the  tech- 
nical terms  of  the  theater.  And  while  novels  of 
the  stage  are  many,  novels  of  the  circus  are  few 
and  novels  of  the  minstrel-show  are  non-existent. 
Just  at  present  the  writers  of  fiction  seem  to  have 
a  particular  fancy  for  the  moving-picture;  and 
they  are  making  plain  to  new  readers  the  methods 
and  the  mysteries  of  the  art  of  the  screen,  still 
in  process  of  rapid  development.  These  readers 
are  enlightened  as  to  the  heroine's  endeavor  to 
register  her  swiftly  changing  emotions  and  as 
to  her  efforts  to  avoid  wasting  film.  They  are 
told  what  a  close-up  is;  they  are  informed  as  to 
the  precise  moment  when  the  director  tells  the 
camera-man  to  shoot ;  and  they  may  even  be 
instructed  as  to  the  meaning  of  a  necessary  but 
entirely  new  verb  made  out  of  an  old  noun, — the 
verb  to  panoram. 

IV 

Rapidly  expanding  as  the  vocabulary  of  the 
moving-picture  studio  may  be,  rich  as  the  vocab- 
ulary   of    the    variety-show    may    be,     ample 
as   the   vocabulary    of    the    circus    already    is, 
259 


THE    PRINCIPLES    OF    PLAYiMAKING 

no  one  of  them  is  as  full  and  as  varied  as  the 
vocabulary  of  the  theater  itself, — a  vocabulary 
having  its  remoter  origins  in  the  rude  mysteries 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  expanding  steadily  in  the 
professional  playhouse  of  Elizabeth  and  James, 
enlarging  itself  again  in  the  roofed  and  artificially 
lighted  theaters  of  the  Restoration,  gaining  a 
further  elaboration  in  the  eighteenth-century 
theater  with  the  development  of  scene-painting 
by  De  Loutherburg,  and  attaining  to  its  present 
complexity  after  the  invention  of  the  electric 
light  had  aided  in  the  substitution  of  our  present 
picture-frame  stage  for  the  apron-stage  of  a 
hundred  years  ago. 

The  unlearned  reader  of  Henslowe's  diary  is 
likely  to  wonder  what  matter  of  property  it  was 
which  he  there  finds  catalogued  as  "/  Hell- 
month."  The  inquiring  reader  of  Ford's  plays 
is  interested  to  discover  that  this  dramatist  in 
one  of  his  pieces  calls  for  the  use  of  a  "chair  with 
an  engine," — the  context  making  it  evident  that 
this  was  a  trick-chair,  with  concealed  arms  which 
flew  forward  to  imprison  the  unsuspicious  sitter 
whenever  the  villain  released  the  secret  spring. 
The  intelligent  reader  of  Shakspere  who  abandons 
our  misleading  library  editions,  with  their  modern- 
ized stage-directions,  and  who  turns  to  the  original 
folios  and  quartos,  can  gather  a  significant  collec- 
tion of  Elizabethan  stage-technicalities,  which  he 
will  find  helpful  to  a  proper  understanding  of  the 
260 


THE   VOCABULARY  OF  THE   SHOW-BUSINESS 

conditions  of  theatrical  performance  in  Tudor 
days.  In  'Julius  Caesar,'  for  example,  when  the 
time  comes  for  Mark  Antony  to  deliver  his  address 
to  the  Roman  populace  we  are  informed  that  "  he 
goes  up  into  the  pulpit" — that  is  to  say  into  a 
crude  and  conventionalized  rostrum  perfectly 
satisfactory  to  the  groundlings  who  stood  restless 
in  the  unroofed  yard. 

This  intelligent  reader  of  Shakspere  may  how- 
ever find  himself  a  little  at  a  loss  when  he  comes 
to  the  'Taming  of  the  Shrew'  and  when  he  finds 
that  at  a  certain  moment  the  stage-direction 
declares  "enter  the  drunkard  above."  The 
context  however  will  make  it  plain  that  the 
drunkard  is  Christopher  Sly;  and  any  text-book 
of  the  Tudor  theater  will  inform  him  that  "to 
enter  above"  meant  to  appear  in  the  gallery  over 
the  stage  so  that  the  actor  could  look  down  on 
the  action  taking  place  on  the  broad  platform 
below.  The  Elizabethan  "to  enter  above"  must 
not  be  confounded  with  our  modern  "to  go  up 
stage"  which  means  to  go  further  back  from  the 
footlights  just  as  "to  come  down"  means  to  ap- 
proach them.  If  however  this  Shaksperian  reader 
meets  with  the  unfamiliar  word  traverse,  he  will 
consult  the  text-books  in  vain  for  a  satisfactory 
explanation,  since  we  have  not  yet  ascertained 
exactly  what  kind  of  a  scenic  appliance  this  term 
designated. 

The  compiler  of  the  much  to  be  wisht  for  his- 
261 


THE    PRINCIPLES  OF   PLAYMAKING 

torical  dictionary  of  theatrical  terms,  ancient  and 
modern,  will  make  it  plain  that  the  word  clown 
did  not  connote  to  the  Elizabethans  what  it  did 
to  the  Victorians.  It  did  not  mean  an  acrobatic 
humorist  of  the  circus  or  a  comic  character  in  a 
pantomime.  It  was  in  fact  almost  the  exact 
equivalent  of  low  comedian,  of  the  performer 
who  undertakes  the  broadly  comic  parts,  the  ac- 
cepted funmaker  of  the  company,  certain  to  pro- 
voke a  ready  laugh  merely  by  his  welcome  ap- 
pearance even  before  he  has  crackt  his  first  joke. 
That  there  were  recognized  "lines  of  business"  in 
the  English  theater  while  Shakspere  was  writing 
for  it  is  indisputable;  but  except  in  this  single 
case  of  the  clown  we  do  not  know  what  they  were 
called.  It  seems  likely  that  in  the  company  of 
the  Globe  theater  Condell  played  heavies  and 
that  some  unidentified  but  brilliant  performer  was 
entrusted  with  the  light-comedy  parts.  But  we 
have  no  information  as  to  the  names  given  to  these 
two  lines  of  business  or  even  if  they  had  then  any 
specific  name.  As  the  Tudor  actors  had  become 
professional  only  a  few  years  before  Shakspere 
went  on  the  stage,  it  is  probable  that  they  had 
not  yet  been  forced  to  invent  a  long  list  of  tech- 
nical terms,  altho  they  must  have  had  many 
which  have  not  come  down  to  us. 


262 


THE   VOCABULARY   OF   THE    SHOW-BUSINESS 


In  the  course  of  the  past  three  centuries  and 
a  half  the  theater  has  soHdly  establisht  itself; 
it  has  undergone  many  changes;  and  its  vocab- 
ulary has  been  multiplied  in  response  to  vary- 
ing conditions.  Shakspere  was  used  to  an  octag- 
onal playhouse,  open  to  the  sky,  with  a  platform 
jutting  into  the  yard.  His  stage  was  encumbered 
by  the  gallants  who  sat  on  both  sides,  smoking 
their  long  pipes.  It  had  abundant  properties  but 
it  had  absolutely  no  scenery,  as  we  now  under- 
stand the  word.  The  machinery  was  extremely 
simple  and  primitive.  As  the  playwrights  sought 
for  as  much  spectacle  as  was  possible  on  their 
bare  stage,  and  as  they  delighted  in  storms — 
there  are  three  of  these  in  '  King  Lear,' — probably 
their  theater  had  devices  akin  to  the  wind- 
machine  and  the  thunder-barrel.  But  Shakspere 
would  be  badly  puzzled  if  he  could  come  back  to 
hear  a  producer  of  our  own  time  talk  about  the 
wings  or  the  flies,  about  tormentors  and  border- 
lights,  about  panorama-grooves  and  cyclorama- 
drops. 

While  Shakspere  could  not  possibly  have  fore- 
seen these  terms  descriptive  of  our  latter-day 
complexity  of  stage-decoration,  he  would  find 
it  easy  enough  to  arrive  at  the  significance  of 
phrases  which  dealt  rather  with  the  art  of  the 
actor.  He  would  not  take  long  to  ascertain  that 
263 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

one  performer  confines  himself  to  straight  business 
or  that  another  performer  had  a  part  that  played 
itself.  He  would  appreciate  the  compliment 
when  he  was  assured  that  certain  plays  of  his, 
'Hamlet*  for  one  and  'As  You  Like  It'  for  an- 
other, were  actor-proof.  He  would  be  inclined  to 
praise  the  actor,  who  was  always  letter-perfect, 
who  never  failed  to  get  a  hand,  whose  popu- 
larity was  so  great  that  no  piece  in  which  he  ap- 
peared was  ever  a. frost,  and  whose  memory  was 
so  good  that  he  never  dried  up. 

Men  who  rarely  or  never  enter  the  theater  will 
be  found  declaring  that  a  certain  politician  is 
only  an  understudy,  altho  he  is  always  seeking  to 
get  himself  in  the  spotlight,  thereby  making  a 
three-ring  circus  of  himself.  In  an  incriminat- 
ing letter  one  American  statesman  asserted  that 
he  would  not  be  found  "  a  dead  head  in  the  enter- 
prize";  and  another  American  statesman,  when 
he  was  a  candidate  for  the  presidency,  was  loudly 
advertized  as  "the  advance-agent  of  prosperity." 

(1917-) 


264 


XV 

MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AND  THE  THEATER 


THOSE  of  us  who  are  now  sexagenarians  and 
who  had  the  good  fortune  to  make  acquain- 
tance with  'Essays  in  Criticism '  in  our  undergradu- 
ate days  and  to  read  the  successive  collections  of 
Matthew  Arnold's  later  criticisms  as  they  ap- 
peared one  by  one  in  the  score  of  years  that  fol- 
lowed, can  never  forget  the  debt  we  owe  to  the 
critic  who  opened  our  eyes  to  the  value  of  culture, 
to  the  purpose  of  criticism  and  to  the  duty  of 
"seeing  the  thing  as  it  is."  We  felt  an  increasing 
stimulus  as  we  came  to  know  Arnold's  writings 
more  intimately,  as  we  absorbed  them,  as  we  made 
his  ideas  our  own,  as  we  sought  to  apply  his 
principles  and  to  borrow  his  methods.  The 
influence  of  Arnold's  work  upon  the  generation 
born  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  was 
immediate  and  it  has  been  enduring. 

"Without  in  the  least  over-rating  himself," 
so  Brownell  has  finely  phrased  it,  Arnold  "took 
himself  with  absolute  seriousness,  and  his  work 
from  first  to  last  is  informed  with  the  high  sin- 
cerity of  a  consistent  purpose — the  purpose  of 
265 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

being  nobly  useful  to  his  time  and  country  by 
preaching  to  men  precisely  the  gospel  he  conceived 
they  most  vitally  needed.  For  the  consideration 
of  his  public  and  his  era  he  deemed  energy  less 
important  than  light,  earnestness  less  needful  than 
sweetness,  genius  less  beneficent  than  reasonable- 
ness, erudition  less  called  for  than  culture."  He 
preacht  always  persuasively,  making  his  points 
sharply  and  often  tipping  them  with  wit  that 
they  might  penetrate  the  more  swiftly.  He  knew 
so  certainly  what  he  wanted  to  prove  that  it  was 
easy  for  him  always  to  be  clear.  His  style,  one 
of  the  most  delightful  in  the  whole  range  of  English 
literature,  is  ever  limpid,  pellucid,  transparent. 

As  he  was  directly  addressing  the  public  of 
his  own  era,  he  constantly  dealt  with  the  themes  of 
immediate  interest  to  his  contemporaries  in  his 
own  country.  So  it  is  that  a  large  proportion  of 
his  writing,  always  indisputably  literary  in  its 
treatment,  is  now  discovered  to  be  sometimes 
journalistic  in  its  theme.  Whatever  interest  his 
discussion  of  the  Burials  Bill,  and  of  the  Deceased 
Wife's  Sister's  Bill,  may  have  had  when 
these  topics  were  being  hotly  debated  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  has  evaporated  now  that 
the  passage  of  years  has  deprived  them  of  their 
pertinency.  Moreover,  even  in  writing  his  es- 
says on  questions  of  permanent  importance,  the 
question  of  secondary  education,  for  example,  and 
the  question  of  the  classics  against  the  sciences, 
266 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AND  THE  THEATER 

Arnold  was  so  eager  to  catch  the  attention  of  his 
contemporaries  that  he  never  hesitated  to  make 
use  of  illustrations  from  the  happenings  of  the 
moment,  likely  to  be  a  little  unintelligible  to 
readers  of  a  later  generation. 

To  say  this  is  to  suggest  that  he  yielded  a  little 
too  much  and  a  little  too  often  to  the  temptation 
of  an  instantaneous  and  fleeting  effect,  and  that 
there  are  passages  in  his  writings,  and  not  a  few 
of  them,  which  will  be  obscure  to  readers  of  the 
twentieth  century  without  an  annotation  almost 
as  abundant  as  that  which  does  not  prevent 
Pope's  'Dunciad'  from  being  unreadable.  The 
fact  is  that  Arnold,  although  essentially  a  man 
of  letters,  had  a  hankering  after  the  newspaper, 
after  the  direct  and  evanescent  impression  of 
journalism.  His  essays  were  publisht  in  maga- 
zines and  reviews;  and  the  magazine, — and  the 
review  also — is  always  alert  to  capture  the  ele- 
ment of  timeliness;  it  is  at  best  only  a  bridge 
between  literature  and  journalism.  'Friend- 
ship's Garland,'  one  of  the  most  amusing  of  Ar- 
nold's books  and  one  in  which  he  most  completely 
exprest  certain  of  his  opinions,  was  originally 
contributed  to  a  daily  paper,  the  Pall  Mall  Ga- 
zette, at  irregular  intervals  during  the  years  1866 
to  1870.  It  is  true  that  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette, 
while  under  the  control  of  its  founder,  Frederick 
Greenwood,  and  afterward  when  it  was  edited  by 
John  Morley,  was  the  most  literary  of  London 
267 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

journals,  rivalling  in  this  respect  the  Temps  and 
the  Dehats  of  Paris.  To  this  evening  journal, 
appealing  to  the  better  sort  of  newspaper  readers, 
Arnold  continued  to  contribute  from  time  to 
time  brief  articles  on  literary  and  educational 
topics,  most  of  which  he  did  not  care  to  preserve 
in  his  successive  volumes,  and  only  half-a-dozen 
of  which  have  been  included  even  in  the  more 
or  less  complete  edition  de  luxe  of  his  prose  and 
verse  publisht  in  fifteen  volumes  in  1903-4  and 
limited  to  seven  hundred  and  fifty  copies. 

Among  these  newspaper  contributions  rescued 
in  this  limited  edition  are  a  valuable  note  on 
George  Sand  (whom  he  rated  higher  than  Bal- 
zac), and  a  series  of  five  letters  from  'An  Old 
Playgoer,'  written  between  December,  1882,  and 
October,  1884.  These  five  letters  represent  his 
sole  venture  into  the  field  of  theatrical  criticism, 
— excepting  only  the  very  interesting  paper  on  the 
'French  Play  in  London,*  evoked  by  the  visit  of 
the  Comedie-Franjaise  to  England  in  1879.  This 
single  essay  and  these  five  brief  letters  are  the 
only  evidences  of  Arnold's  keen  interest  in  the 
theater.  He  was  a  constant  playgoer, — unlike 
Sainte-Beuve,  in  whose  footsteps  he  followed 
loyally  and  who  seems  to  have  cared  little  for  the 
acted  drama,  altho  he  was  always  character- 
istically acute  and  felicitous  in  his  criticism  of 
Moliere  and  of  the  other  masters  of  the  French 
stage. 

268 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD   AND   THE    THEATER 

Born  in  1822,  Matthew  Arnold  was  old  enough 
to  have  witnessed  the  final  appearances  of  the  last 
of  the  Kemble  brotherhood;  and  in  one  of  the 
Pall  Mall  Gazette  letters  he  recorded  his  opinion 
that  the  Benedick  of  Charles  Kemble  was  superior 
to  that  of  Henry  Irving.  "  I  remember  how  in  my 
youth,"  he  confest  in  his  paper  on  the  perform- 
ances of  the  Comedie-Frangaise,  "after  a  first 
sight  of  the  divine  Rachel  at  the  Edinburgh 
theater,  in  the  part  of  Hermione,  I  followed  her  to 
Paris,  and  for  two  months  never  missed  one  of  her 
performances."  No  doubt  it  was  this  intensive 
study  of  the  great  actress  which  inspired  his  three 
noble  sonnets  on  Rachel. 

One  can  glean  from  his  publisht  corre- 
spondence a  sparse  record  of  his  occasional  visits 
to  the  theater  in  England  and  on  the  continent, — 
records  often  accompanied  by  his  off-hand  judg- 
ments of  the  plays  and  of  the  players  whom  he 
beheld.  In  February,  1861,  he  saw  Charles 
Fechter  as  Othello:  "the  first  two  acts  I  thought 
poor  (Shakspere's  fault,  partly),  the  next  two  ef- 
fective, and  the  last  pretty  well."  In  April, 
1864,  he  accepted  an  invitation  to  see  Kate  Bate- 
man  as  Leah,  adding  that  he  had  already  seen 
"most  of  the  things  that  are  being  given  now." 
In  March,  1865,  he  went  with  his  family  to  see 
Sothern  as  Lord  Dundreary.  In  November, 
1874,  he  writes  that  he  much  wanted  to  see  '  Ham- 
let' (which  Irving  was  then  acting);  and  in 
269 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

February,  1876,  he  tells  his  sister  that  he  is  going 
to  see  "that  gibbering  performance,  as  I  fear  it  is, 
Irving's  Othello."  Nearly  ten  years  later  in 
November,  1885,  he  saw  'Othello'  at  the  Royal 
Theater  in  Berlin:  — "horrid!  but  I  wanted  for 
once  to  see  Shakspere  in  German."  And  a  year 
after,  in  March,  1886,  when  he  was  again  in  Ger- 
many, he  reported  that  he  was  going  "a  great  deal 
to  the  theaters,  the  acting  is  so  good"  (this  was 
in  Munich). 

II 

In  1856,  when  he  was  thirty-four,  he  seems  to 
have  planned  a  closet-drama  on  a  Roman  theme; 
"  I  am  full  of  a  tragedy  of  the  time  of  the  end  of 
the  Republic — one  of  the  most  colossal  times  of 
the  world,  1  think.  ...  It  won't  see  the  light, 
however,  before  1857."  It  never  has  seen  the 
light;  and  when  1857  arrived  it  found  him  at 
work  on  a  closet-drama  on  a  Greek  theme,  the 
'  Merope'  which  he  was  to  publish  in  1858.  As  he 
was  engaged  in  rehandling  a  story  already  dealt 
with  by  Euripides,  Maffei,  Voltaire  and  Alfieri, 
Arnold  wisely  undertook  an  analysis  of  the 
dramaturgic  methods  of  the  greatest  and  the  most 
skilful  of  all  the  Attic  dramatists:  "what  I  learn 
in  studying  Sophocles  for  my  present  purpose  is, 
or  seems  to  me,  wonderful;  so  far  exceeding  all 
that  one  would  learn  in  years '  reading  of  him  with- 
out such  a  purpose." 

270 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD   AND   THE   THEATER 

In  the  preface  to  his  collected  'Poems,'  issued 
in  1853,  he  had  discust  the  poet's  choice  of  a 
theme.  He  did  not  cite  but  he  echoed  Voltaire's 
assertion  that  the  success  of  a  tragedy  depends  on 
its  subject.  In  fact,  Arnold  is  discussing  poetry 
at  large  and  not  dramatic  poetry  only,  yet  the 
principle  he  laid  down  applies  with  special  force  to 
the  drama:  "the  poet  has  in  the  first  place  to 
select  an  excellent  action;  and  what  actions  are 
the  most  excellent  ?  Those,  certainly,  which  most 
powerfully  appeal  to  the  great  primary  human 
affections:  to  those  elementary  feelings  which  sub- 
sist permanently  in  the  race,  and  which  are  in- 
dependent of  time." 

In  the  preface  to  'Merope'  itself,  written  five 
years  later,  Arnold  sought  to  justify  his  selection 
of  a  Greek  action,  and  his  attempt  to  present  this 
action  as  he  imagined  it  would  have  been  pre- 
sented by  a  Greek  dramatist.  He  described  the 
origin  and  development  of  Greek  tragedy,  proving 
his  knowledge  of  its  principles.  Yet  in  the  play 
itself  he  was  unable  to  apply  these  principles 
successfully.  He  lackt  both  the  native  dramatic 
genius  and  the  acquired  theatrical  talent.  In  a 
letter  of  February,  1858,  to  his  sister,  he  exprest 
his  dissatisfaction  with  the  adverse  criticisms  of 
his  dramatic  poem,  which  were  the  result  largely 
of  his  own  argumentative  preface:  "Instead  of 
reading  it  for  what  it  is  worth,  everybody  begins 
to  consider  whether  it  does  not  betray  a  design  to 
271 


THE    PRINCIPLES  OF   PLAYMAKING 

substitute  tragedies  d  la  grecqiie  for  every  other 
kind  of  poetical  composition  in  England,  and  falls 
into  an  attitude  of  violent  resistance  to  such  an 
imaginary  design.  What  I  meant  them  to  see  in 
it  was  a  specimen  of  the  world  created  by  the 
Greek  imagination.  This  imagination  was  dif- 
ferent from  our  own,  and  it  is  hard  for  us  to  appre- 
ciate, even  to  understand  it;  but  it  had  a  peculiar 
power,  grandeur,  and  dignity,  and  these  are  worth 
trying  to  get  an  apprehension  of." 

What  Arnold  himself  failed  to  perceive  is  that 
the  peculiar  power,  grandeur  and  dignity  of  the 
Greek  imagination  can  best  be  apprehended  by  a 
study  of  the  tragedies  written  by  the  Greeks  them- 
selves and  that  there  was  no  need  for  him  or  for 
any  other  Englishman  to  try  to  beat  the  Attic 
tragedians  on  their  own  ground  and  with  their 
own  weapons.  After  all,  the  most  satisfactory 
Greek  tragedies  are  and  must  be  those  written  by 
the  Greeks,  as  the  most  satisfactory  Elizabethan 
dramas  are  those  written  by  the  Elizabethans. 
The  action  of  'Merope'  might  be  excellent;  it 
might  "most  powerfully  appeal  to  the  great 
primary  human  affections";  but  it  could  exert 
this  appeal  upon  a  modern  audience  only  if  it  were 
presented  in  accord  with  modern  conditions.  The 
theme  of  'Merope'  might  have  a  universal  and 
perennial  interest,  but  the  form  which  Matthew 
Arnold  gave  it  was  only  local  and  temporary, 
however  superb  it  might  have  been  when  it  had 
272 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AND  THE  THEATER 

evolved  spontaneously  from  the  special  conditions 
of  theatrical  performance  in  Athens.  Further- 
more, with  all  his  liking  for  the  acted  drama, 
Arnold  in  composing  'Merope'  was  not  thinking 
of  performance  in  any  theater,  he  was  creating 
only  a  closet-drama,  a  still-born  offspring  of  the 
Muse.  A  play  which  is  not  intended  to  be  played 
is  a  contradiction  in  terms;  it  is  an  overt  ab- 
surdity, no  matter  how  greatly  gifted  the  poet 
may  be  who  deceives  himself  in  the  vain  effort  to 
achieve  the  truly  dramatic  without  taking  into 
account  the  theater,  in  which  only  can  the  true 
drama  be  born. 

Eight  years  later  he  seems  to  have  been  on  the 
verge  of  repeating  his  blunder  and  of  again  wast- 
ing his  effort  in  an  attempt  foredoomed  to  failure. 
In  March,  1866,  he  wrote  to  his  mother  that  he 
was  troubled  to  find  that  Tennyson  was  at  work 
on  a  subject,  the  story  of  the  Latin  poet  Lucretius, 
which  he  himself  had  been  occupied  with  for 
some  twenty  years:  "I  was  going  to  make  a 
tragedy  out  of  it.  .  .  .  I  shall  probably  go  on 
with  it,  but  it  is  annoying,  the  more  so  as  1  cannot 
possibly  go  on  at  present  so  as  to  be  ready  this 
year,  but  must  wait  till  next."  Fortunately  for 
himself  he  did  not  go  on;  and  before  the  next  year 
came  the  project  of  a  tragedy  on  Lucretius  had 
joined  the  earlier  project  of  the  tragedy  "of  the 
time  of  the  end  of  the  Republic."  In  the  first 
planned  dramatic  poem  there  might  have  been  the 
273 


THE    PRINCIPLES  OF    PLAYMAKING 

stuff  out  of  which  a  true  tragedy  could  be  made, 
even  if  Arnold  was  not  the  man  to  make  it ;  but 
the  subject  of  the  later  Roman  poem  seems  hope- 
lessly infertile.  It  is  true  that  Moliere  was  in- 
tensely interested  in  Lucretius,  and  Moliere  was  a 
born  playwright;  but  all  that  Moliere  planned  to 
do  was  to  make  a  French  translation  of  the  great 
work  of  Lucretius;  and  the  Latin  poet  would 
never  have  suggested  himself  to  the  French  drama- 
tist as  the  possible  hero  of  a  tragedy. 

Ill 

With  Arnold's  persistent  desire  to  use  the  dra- 
matic form,  with  his  lively  curiosity  as  to  the  prin- 
ciples of  playmaking  and  with  his  unfailing  in- 
terest in  the  art  of  acting,  we  may  well  wonder 
why  it  is  that  no  one  of  his  more  elaborate  critical 
studies  was  devoted  to  any  of  the  great  dramatists. 
There  are  the  lofty  sonnets  on  Sophocles  and  on 
Shakspere;  but  there  is  no  single  study  of  Soph- 
ocles or  of  Shakspere  or  of  Moliere.  Scattered 
thru  his  essays  are  many  penetrating  bits  of 
criticism  upon  one  or  another  of  the  playwrights 
of  Europe.  In  the  essay,  'A  French  Critic  on 
Goethe,'  for  example,  there  is  an  illuminating 
comparison  of  Goethe's  'Goetz  von  Berlichingen' 
with  Schiller's  '  Robbers.'  Arnold  quoted  the 
assertion  of  a  British  critic  that  "there  was  some- 
thing which  prevented  Goethe  from  ever  becom- 
274 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AND  THE  THEATER 

ing  a  great  dramatist;  he  could  never  lose  him- 
self sufficiently  in  his  creations."  And  on  this 
Arnold  commented  that  it  is  in  'Goetz'  that 
Goethe  loses  himself  most.  'Goetz'  is  full  of 
faults,  "  but  there  is  a  life  and  a  power  in  it, 
and  it  is  not  dull.  This  is  what  distinguishes 
it  from  Schiller's  '  Robbers.'  The  '  Robbers'  is  at 
once  violent  and  tiresome.  'Goetz'  is  violent, 
but  it  is  not  tiresome." 

The  one  long  article  devoted  exclusively  to 
things  theatrical  is  the  '  French  Play  in  London/ 
written  in  1879,  and  reprinted  in  '  Irish  Essays,' — 
a  volume  in  which  it  finds  itself  strangely  out  of 
place  in  its  enforced  companionship  with  half-a- 
dozen  sprightly  specimens  of  political  polemic. 
The  '  French  Play  in  London'  is  one  of  the  clever- 
est of  Arnold's  essays,  and  one  of  the  most  charm- 
ing. It  is  also  one  of  the  most  valuable,  rich 
in  matter,  graceful  and  urbane  in  manner,  witty 
in  expression  and  wise  in  outlook.  It  reveals 
Arnold's  genuine  appreciation  of  the  drama  as  a 
literary  form, — and  it  discloses  also  his  under- 
standing of  the  art  of  acting,  by  which  only  is  the 
drama  made  vital. 

The  Comedie-Frangaise  was  then  in  the  pleni- 
tude of  its  superiority  over  all  other  histrionic  ag- 
gregations. It  possest  a  company  of  comedians 
probably  unequalled  in  France  before  or  since,  and 
certainly  unequalled  in  England, — except  possibly 
at  Drury  Lane  in  the  early  years  of  Sheridan's 
275 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

management,  when  the  '  School  for  Scandal '  was 
"in  all  its  glory,"  as  Charles  Lamb  said.  The 
boards  of  the  Theatre  Franjais  were  nightly  trod 
by  Got  and  Coquelin,  by  Thiron,  Barre  and 
Febvre,  by  Sarah-Bernhardt  and  Croizette,  by 
Barretta  and  Jouassain.  In  comedy,  in  Moliere, 
Beaumarchais  and  Augier,  it  was  incomparable;  in 
Hugo  it  was  superb;  and  even  if  it  was  not  so 
superb  in  Corneille  and  Racine,  it  was  at  least 
far  more  than  adequate. 

Although  Arnold  began  by  declaring  that  he 
did  not  propose  to  analize  the  artistic  accomplish- 
ment of  the  several  members  of  this  galaxy  of 
stars,  he  did  allow  himself  one  excursus  into  purely 
histrionic  criticism, — an  excursus  which  proved 
both  his  insight  and  his  foresight.  He  pointed 
out — and  this  was  in  1879 — the  fatal  defect  in  the 
equipment  of  Sarah-Bernhardt,  a  defect  which  was 
to  be  made  painfully  manifest  in  the  ensuing 
thirty  years: — "One  remark  I  will  make,  a  remark 
suggested  by  the  inevitable  comparison  of  Mile. 
Sarah-Bernhardt  with  Rachel.  One  talks  vaguely 
of  genius,  but  1  had  never  till  now  comprehended 
how  much  of  Rachel's  superiority  was  purely  in 
intellectual  power,  how  eminently  this  power 
counts  in  the  actor's  art  as  in  all  arts,  how  just 
is  the  instinct  which  led  the  Greeks  to  mark 
with  a  high  and  severe  stamp  the  Muses.  Tem- 
perament and  quick  intelligence,  passion,  ner- 
vous mobility,  grace,  smile,  voice,  charm,  poet- 
ry,— Mile.  Sarah-Bernhardt  has  them  all.  One 
276 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD  AND  THE  THEATER 

watches  her  with  pleasure,  with  admiration, — 
and  yet  not  without  a  secret  disquietude.  Some- 
thing is  wanting,  or,  at  least,  not  present  in 
sufficient  force,  something  which  alone  can  secure 
and  fix  her  administration  of  all  the  charming 
gifts  which  she  has,  can  alone  keep  them  fresh, 
keep  them  sincere,  save  them  from  perils  by  ca- 
price, perils  by  mannerism.  That  something  is 
high  intellectual  power.  It  was  here  that  Rachel 
was  so  great;  she  began,  one  says  to  oneself  as 
one  recalls  her  image  and  dwells  upon  it, — she 
began  almost  where  Mile.  Sarah-Bernhardt  ends." 

A  little  later  in  his  essay,  Arnold,  as  was  his 
wont,  and  in  accord  with  what  Brownell  has  called 
his  "missionary  spirit,"  askt  what  was  the  moral 
to  be  drawn  by  us  who  speak  English  from  the 
opportunity  to  study  the  best  that  the  French 
stage  had  to  offer.  He  digrest  to  point  out  that 
Victor  Hugo  is  not  "a  poet  of  the  race  and  lineage 
of  Shakspere",  as  Swinburne  had  rashly  asserted 
in  one  of  his  characteristically  dithyrambic  rhap- 
sodies. Arnold  dwelt  also  on  the  inferiority  of  the 
rimed  French  alexandrine  to  English  blank  verse 
and  to  the  Greek  iambic  as  a  poetic  instrument 
for  dramatic  use.  "Victor  Hugo  is  said  to  be 
a  cunning  and  mighty  artist  in  alexandrines, 
and  so  unquestionably  he  is;  but  he  is  an  artist 
in  a  form  radically  inadequate  and  inferior,  and 
in  which  a  drama  like  that  of  Sophocles  or 
Shakspere  is  impossible." 

Then  Arnold,  writing  in  1879,  it  must  be  again 
277 


THE    PRINCIPLES  OF   PLAYMAKING 

recalled,  declared  that  "we  in  England  have  no 
modern  drama  at  all.  We  have  our  Elizabethan 
drama"  and  eighteenth-century  comedy.  "Then 
we  have  numberless  imitations  and  adaptations 
from  the  French.  All  of  these  are  at  bottom  fan- 
tastic,"— because  the  result  of  putting  French 
wine  into  English  bottles  is  to  give  to  the  attentive 
observer  "a  sense  of  incurable  falsity  in  the  piece 
as  adapted."  To  this  point  Arnold  was  to  recur 
again  in  one  of  his  '  Letters  of  an  Old  Playgoer.' 
Yet  even  at  this  moment,  when  the  English  lan- 
guage had  no  drama  dealing  with  life  of  the  Eng- 
lish-speaking peoples,  these  peoples  were  revealing 
a  steadily  increasing  interest  in  the  theater. 
"  1  see  our  community  turning  to  the  theater  with 
eagerness,  and  finding  the  English  theater  with- 
out organization  or  purpose,  or  dignity, — and  no 
modern  English  drama  at  all  except  a  fantastical 
one.  And  then  I  see  the  French  company  from 
the  chief  theater  of  Paris  showing  themselves  to 
us  in  London, — a  society  of  actors,  admirable  in 
organization,  purpose  and  dignity,  with  a  modern 
drama  not  fantastic  at  all,  but  corresponding 
with  fidelity  to  a  very  palpable  and  powerful 
ideal." 

He  askt  "What  is  the  consequence  which  it  is 
right  and  rational  for  us  to  draw?  Surely  it  is 
this:  'The  theater  is  irresistible;  organise  the 
theater.'"  And  then  he  outlined  a  method  of 
organization  which  would  provide  London  with 
278 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AND  THE  THEATER 

a  company  of  actors  worthy  of  consideration  by 
the  side  of  the  company  which  had  come  over  from 
Paris.  When  this  is  once  done  a  modern  drama 
"will  also,  probably,  spring  up"; — that  is  to  say, 
Arnold  hoped  that  an  adequate  and  working  or- 
ganization of  the  theater  would  bring  about  a 
new  birth  in  the  English  drama.  And  the  event 
proved  that  the  second  of  these  hopes  was  to  be 
fulfilled  without  being  preceded  by  any  effort  to 
attain  the  first.  The  English  theater  is  not  yet 
"organized"  in  accord  with  Arnold's  suggestions; 
but  the  English  language  has  developt  a  modern 
drama,  not  adapted  from  the  French  and  there- 
fore not  fantastic  at  all,  but  corresponding  with 
more  or  less  fidelity  to  a  palpable  and  powerful 
ideal.  The  beginnings  of  this  revivification  of 
the  English  drama  were  already  visible  in  1879, 
altho  they  were  a  little  more  obviously  visible 
five  years  later,  in  1884,  when  Arnold  wrote  the 
fifth  and  final  of  his  'Letters  of  an  Old  Playgoer.' 

IV 

The  first  of  these  letters  was  the  result  of  an 
invitation  from  Henry  Arthur  Jones  to  attend  the 
first  performance  of  the  'Silver  King'  on  Novem- 
ber 16,  1882;  and  the  other  four  followed  at  ir- 
regular intervals  during  the  next  two  years,  called 
forth  by  one  or  another  of  the  "current  attrac- 
tions" at  the  London  theaters.  It  is  plain  enough 
279 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

that  he  enjoyed  writing  them,  pleased  at  the  new 
opportunity  to  apply  the  old  doctrine  and  glad  to 
note  the  signs  of  the  coming  of  a  modern  English 
drama,  slowly  purging  itself  of  fantasticality. 
When  Morley  exprest  his  liking  for  these  letters, 
Arnold  called  them  "the  last  flicker  of  a  nearly 
exhausted  rushlight."  Yet  they  still  have  illu- 
mination for  us,  more  than  thirty  years  later.  They 
deal  with  both  of  the  aspects  of  the  double  art 
of  the  drama,  with  the  plays  themselves  and  with 
the  performers  who  made  them  live  at  the  mo- 
ment. They  disclose  Arnold's  constant  sanity, 
his  penetrating  shrewdness,  his  ability  to  see  the 
thing  as  it  is,  his  cogency  of  presentation,  his 
power  of  drawing  out  the  principle  from  the  prac- 
tice, and  his  insistence  on  finding  the  moral  latent 
in  every  manifestation  of  art. 

In  the  performance  of  the  'Silver  King'  Arnold 
noted  "the  high  general  level  of  the  acting,"  and 
he  contrasted  this  with  his  memories  of  thirty-five 
years  earlier  when  Macready  was  acting  his 
great  Shaksperian  parts,  supported  by  two  or 
three  middling  actors,  "and  the  rest  moping  and 
mowing  in  what  was  not  to  be  called  English  but 
rather  stagese," — a  remark  to  be  recommended 
to  the  consideration  of  those  praisers  of  past  times 
who  still  talk  of  the  palmy  days  and  who  affect 
to  believe  that  the  level  of  acting  is  lower  than  it 
was  when  the  old  stock-companies  strutted  to  half- 
empty  houses  in  dingy  and  shabby  theaters. 
280 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AND  THE  THEATER 

He  found  that  the  'Silver  King'  was  an  honest 
melodrama,  relying  "for  its  main  effect  on 
an  outer  drama  of  sensational  incidents,"  that  is  to 
say,  upon  its  external  action,  rather  than  on  its 
characters.  But  melodrama  as  it  was  in  its  struc- 
ture, the  'Silver  King'  was  not  melodramatic  in 
its  dialog.  "  In  general  thruout  the  piece  the  dic- 
tion and  the  sentiments  are  natural;  they  have 
sobriety  and  propriety;  they  are  literature." 

In  the  second  and  third  letters  he  dealt  with 
three  comedy-dramas,  'Forget-me-not'  by  Grove 
and  Merivale,  'A  Great  Catch'  by  Hamilton  Aide, 
and  'Impulse'  by  Charles  Stephenson.  The 
plays  of  Aide  and  of  Grove  and  Merivale  were 
evidences  of  the  immediate  development  of  a 
modern  drama  in  England,  far  superior  in  veracity 
and  in  execution  to  the  adaptations  which  had 
held  the  stage  in  London  half-a-century  earlier. 
Arnold  credited  'Forget-me-not'  with  dialog 
"always  pointed  and  smart,  sometimes  quite 
brilliant";  and  he  declared  that  "the  piece  has 
its  life  from  its  ability  and  verve."  But  with  his 
usual  insight  he  could  not  fail  to  see  that  its 
action  lackt  an  adequate  motive.  In  this  re- 
spect 'A  Great  Catch'  was  more  satisfactory; 
yet  once  again  he  was  able  to  put  his  finger  on 
the  defect;  one  of  the  most  important  characters 
was  inadequately  developt.  Here  Arnold's  criti- 
cism is  purely  technical;  and  it  is  sound  and  useful. 
Then  he  gave  high  praise  to  the  admirable  acting 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

of  Genevieve  Ward,  an  American  who  had  taken  a 
foremost  position  on  the  EngHsh  stage. 

'  Impulse,'  he  did  not  like  at  all:  "a  piece  more 
unprofitable  it  is  hard  to  imagine."  Stephenson's 
play  was  a  flagrant  example  of  the  fantasticality, 
of  the  incurable  falsity,  likely  to  result  from  the 
dislocation  of  a  plot  essentially  French  in  an  ab- 
surd effort  to  adjust  it  to  social  conditions  essen- 
tially English.  The  story  no  longer  represents 
French  life  and  it  misrepresents  English  life; 
it  becomes  "something  half-true,  factitious  and 
unmeaning."  So  the  play  is  "intensely  disagree- 
able," achieving  success  because  of  the  acting 
of  the  two  chief  parts,  because  of  "the  singularly 
attractive,  sympathetic  and  popular  personalities 
of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Kendal;  while  they  are  on  the 
stage  it  is  hard  to  be  dissatisfied." 

The  three  plays  considered  in  the  first  two  let- 
ters were  evidences  that  dramatists  were  coming 
forward  in  England  who  were  capable  not  only  of 
invention  and  construction,  but  who  were  pos- 
sest  also  of  a  sincere  desire  to  deal  with  life  as 
they  severally  saw  it;  and  the  single  play  consid- 
ered in  the  third  letter  was  evidence  that  the 
public  had  not  yet  experienced  a  change  of  heart 
and  still  lingered  in  the  condition  when  it  could  be 
amused  by  insincere  adaptations.  In  the  fourth 
and  fifth  letters  Arnold  had  worthier  topics.  The 
fourth  letter  was  devoted  to  Henry  Irving's 
sumptuous  and  brilliant  presentation  of  'Much 
282 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AND  THE  THEATER 

Ado  About  Nothing' ;  and  the  fifth  and  final  letter, 
the  only  one  written  after  his  visit  to  America, 
after  his  voyage  across  "the  unplumbed,  salt, 
estranging  sea,"  was  devoted  to  Wilson  Barrett's 
ambitious  presentation  of  'Hamlet/ 

Arnold  asserted  that  'Much  Ado'  was  beauti- 
fully put  upon  the  stage,  which  "greatly  heightens 
the  charm  of  ideal  comedy."  He  declared  also 
that  it  was  "acted  with  an  evenness,  a  general 
level  of  merit  which  was  not  to  be  found  twenty- 
five  years  ago."  He  discovered  in  Henry  Irving 
and  also  in  Ellen  Terry  "a  personality  which 
peculiarly  fits  them  for  ideal  comedy.  Miss 
Terry  is  sometimes  restless  and  over-excited;  but 
she  has  a  spirited  vivacity  which  is  charming. 
Mr.  Irving  has  faults  which  have  often  been 
pointed  out;  but  he  has,  as  an  actor,  a  merit 
which  redeems  them  all,  and  which  is  the  secret 
of  his  success:  the  merit  of  delicacy  and  distinc- 
tion. .  .  .  Mankind  are  often  unjust  to  this 
merit,  and  most  of  us  much  resist  having  to  ex- 
hibit it  in  our  own  life  and  soul;  but  it  is  singular 
what  a  charm  it  exercises  over  us." 

Arnold  begins  his  criticism  on  Wilson  Barrett's 
Hamlet  with  a  discussion  of  the  tragedy  itself 
and  with  the  influence  exerted  upon  Shakspere 
himself  at  the  very  moment  of  its  composition 
by  Montaigne.  This  leads  him  to  the  rather 
strange  conclusion  that  'Hamlet'  is  "not  a  drama 
followed  with  perfect  comprehension  and  pro- 
283 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

foundest  emotion,  which  is  the  ideal  for  tragedy, 
but  a  problem,  soliciting  interpretation  and  solu- 
tion. It  will  never,  therefore,  be  a  piece  to  be 
seen  with  pure  satisfaction  by  those  who  will 
not  deceive  themselves.  But  such  is  its  power  and 
such  is  its  fame  that  it  will  always  continue  to  be 
acted,  and  we  shall  all  of  us  continue  to  go  to  see 
it."  Then  the  critic  turns  to  the  acting,  praising 
E.  S.  Willard's  Claudius  and  finding  Wilson  Bar- 
rett's Hamlet  "fresh,  natural,  young,  prepossess- 
ing, animated,  coherent,  the  piece  moves.  All 
Hamlets  I  have  seen  dissatisfy  us  in  something. 
Macready  wanted  person,  Charles  Kean  mind, 
Fechter  English;  Mr.  Wilson  Barrett  wants  elo- 
cution." 


As  we  read  these  'Letters  of  An  Old  Playgoer' 
we  cannot  help  noting  three  things;  first,  Arnold's 
alert  interest  in  the  drama  as  an  art  and  his  in- 
sight into  its  principles;  second,  his  equally  alert 
interest  in  acting  and  his  understanding  of  its 
methods, — an  understanding  quite  unusual  among 
men  of  letters,  who  are  generally  even  more  at  sea 
in  discussing  the  histrionic  art  than  they  are  in  dis- 
cussing the  arts  of  the  painter,  the  sculptor,  and 
the  architect.  And  it  is  significant  that  Arnold's 
own  appreciation  of  dramaturgic  and  histrionic 
craftsmanship  was  not  accompanied  by  any  corre- 
spondingly acute  appreciation  of  either  pictorial 
284 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD   AND   THE   THEATER 

or  plastic  skill,  in  the  manifestations  of  which  he 
seems  never  to  have  been  greatly  interested,  even 
during  his  visits  to  Italy  and  France. 

The  third  thing  we  note  is  that  Arnold  retained 
his  openmindedness  and  his  freshness  of  impres- 
sion. He  was  sixty  when  he  turned  aside  to  con" 
sider  the  improving  conditions  of  the  English 
theater,  the  advance  in  English  acting  and  the 
beginnings  of  the  modern  English  drama;  but  he 
revealed  none  of  the  customary  sexagenarian 
proneness  to  look  back  longingly  to  the  days  of 
his  youth,  and  to  bewail  the  degeneracy  discover- 
able in  the  years  of  his  old  age.  He  was  quick 
to  see  progress  and  frank  in  acknowledging  its 
presence.  Perhaps  his  openmindedness  in  his 
maturity  was  in  some  measure  due  to  his  early 
and  severe  training  in  Greek  and  to  his  absorption 
of  the  free  Greek  spirit,  which  secured  him  against 
pedantry  and  kept  his  vision  unimpaired. 

(1916.) 


28s 


XVI 

MEMORIES  OF  EDWIN   BOOTH 

I 

MY  earliest  recollection  of  Edwin  Booth  goes 
back  to  1865,  when  I  was  taken  to  the 
Winter  Garden  Theater  to  see  one  of  the  hundred 
consecutive  performances  of  'Hamlet* — the  long- 
est run  that  any  play  of  Shakspere's  had  ever  had 
(up  to  that  time)  in  any  city  in  the  world.  I  find 
that  all  I  can  recall  of  the  play,  then  seen  for  the 
first  time,  is  a  misty  memory  of  the  moonlit 
battlements  of  Elsinore  with  the  gray  figure  of  the 
Ghost  as  he  solemnly  stalkt  forward.  A  few 
weeks  later  in  that  same  winter  I  was  allowed  to 
see  Booth  again,  as  Richelieu;  and  I  can  more 
readily  recapture  the  thrill  with  which  I  heard 
him  threaten  to  launch  the  curse  of  Rome.  I 
have  an  impression  that  the  scenery  for  'Riche- 
lieu' had  been  painted  in  Paris;  and  I  think  that 
even  now  after  the  lapse  of  more  than  half-a- 
century  I  can  visualize  the  spacious  and  beautiful 
hall  in  which  Richelieu  had  his  interview  with 
Marion  Delorme. 

In  1869,  when  I  was  scant  seventeen,  I  had  the 
good  fortune  to  be  present  at  the  opening  of 
286 


MEMORIES   OF   EDWIN    BOOTH 

Booth's  own  theater,  the  handsomest  playhouse 
which  had  ever  been  erected  in  New  York  and 
the    most    elaborately    equipt.     The    play    was 

*  Romeo  and  Juliet';  and  the  part  of  the  impulsive 
heroine  was  taken  by  Mary  McVickar,  whom 
Booth  was  soon  to  marry.  The  only  picture  still 
imprinted  on  my  memory  is  the  lovely  garden, 
flooded  with  moonlight,  as  Juliet  appeared  on  the 
balcony  and  as  Romeo  lightly  overleapt  the  walls. 

After  I  attained  to  man's  estate  I  saw  Booth  in 
all  his  great  parts — excepting  only  Richard  II, 
which  he  did  not  long  retain  in  his  repertory. 
The  sinister  malignity  of  his  Pescara    (in  Shiel's 

*  Apostate')  has  etcht  itself  in  my  memory; 
and  so  also  has  the  demoniac  dance  of  Bertuccio 
(in  the  'Fool's  Revenge')  when  the  deeply  out- 
raged jester  believes  that  he  has  been  able  at 
last  to  repay  in  full  the  injury  he  had  received  from 
his  enemy.  As  the  audience  knows  that  it  is  not 
his  enemy's  wife  but  his  own  beloved  daughter 
that  he  has  just  helpt  to  abduct,  the  tragic 
irony  of  the  poignant  situation  was  intensified  by 
the  few  irrepressible  capers  of  the  hunchback,  an 
effect  as  daring  as  it  was  successful,  and  possible 
only  to  an  actor  of  imagination  and  of  unfailing 
certainty  of  execution. 

Altho  I  saw  Edwin  Booth  often  on  the  stage  I 
did  not  have  the  pleasure  of  making  his  acquain- 
tance until  about  1884,  three  or  four  years  before 
he  founded  The  Players, — which  opened  its  doors 
287 


THE    PRINCIPLES  OF   PLAYMAKING 

just  before  midnight  on  the  last  day  of  i! 
One  of  my  good  friends,  Laurence  Hutton  was  a 
good  friend  of  Booth's;  and  when  Hutton  and  I, 
Lawrence  Barrett,  Frank  Millet  and  E.  A.  Abbey 
organized  a  little  dinner  club,  called  The  Kins- 
men, Booth  was  one  of  the  first  of  the  practition- 
ers of  the  several  allied  arts  whom  we  askt  to 
join  us.  In  private  life  he  was  unaffected  and 
unassuming,  gentle,  simple,  modest, — altho  he 
was  naturally  dignified  and  altho  he  could  not 
but  be  conscious  of  his  position  at  the  head  of  the 
American  stage. 

It  has  been  my  privilege  to  know  fairly  well  the 
leaders  of  the  dramatic  profession,  in  the  later 
years  of  the  nineteenth  century,  Booth  and  Irv- 
ing, Jefferson  and  Coquelin,  Salvini  and  Barnay; 
they  were  none  of  them  openly  vainglorious  or 
even  unduly  self-centered;  and  perhaps  Booth 
was  the  least  pretentious  of  them  all.  He  had 
the  saving  sense  of  humor;  and  while  he  took  his 
work  seriously  he  did  not  take  himself  too  seri- 
ously. In  fact,  when  I  read  his  familiar  corre- 
spondence, lovingly  set  in  order  by  his  devoted 
daughter,  I  recognized  the  man  disclosed  in  these 
letters  as  the  very  man  whose  characteristics 
Sargent  captured  and  fixt  forever  in  the  illuminat- 
ing portrait  which  E.  C.  Benedict  presented  to 
The  Players.  There  was  a  certain  transparency 
about  his  character;  and  in  private  life  his  per- 
sonality was  very  winning — a  quality  which  on  the 
288 


MEMORIES   OF    EDWIN    BOOTH 

Stage  transmuted  itself  into  what  is  often  termed 
"magnetism." 

II 

At  the  supper  which  The  Kinsmen  gave  when 
we  welcomed  Irving  as  a  member, — it  had  to  be  a 
supper  and  not  a  dinner  since  Irving  was  acting 
every  night — chance  placed  me  at  table  be- 
tween Booth  and  Irving.  I  noted  with  apprecia- 
tion the  high  friendliness  of  their  association,  de- 
void of  any  suspicion  of  jealousy  or  even  of  rivalry, 
altho  one  of  them  was  the  acknowledged  leader  of 
the  American  stage  and  the  other  was  the  undis- 
puted chief  of  the  British  theater.  It  was  evident 
that  their  cordiality  was  not  put  on  for  the  occa- 
sion only  and  that  they  really  liked  one  another 
and  were  glad  to  foregather  for  the  interchange 
of  experiences.  Of  course,  their  talk  soon 
turned  to  their  profession  and  to  the  mighty 
actors  who  had  preceded  them.  I  soon  discovered 
that  Irving  had  never  been  greatly  interested  in 
the  performers  of  an  earlier  generation;  he  was 
familiar  enough  with  the  careers  of  Macready 
and  of  Charles  Kean,  who  were  his  immediate 
predecessors,  but  he  had  not  cared  to  study  the 
lives  of  Edmund  Kean,  of  George  Frederick  Cooke 
and  of  the  Kembles,  who  had  been  the  leaders  of 
the  stage  two  generations  earlier.  Of  course,  it  is 
never  necessary  for  an  artist  to  be  a  student  of 
the  biographical  history  of  his  art;  for  him  it  is 
289 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

sufficient  if  he  has  spent  his  strength  on  mastering 
its  principles  and  in  training  himself  to  apply 
them. 

Booth's  devotion  to  the  memory  of  his  father, 
the  Junius  Brutus  Booth  who  had  been  hailed  as 
a  rival  of  Edmund  Kean,  had  lured  him  into  the 
study  of  the  lives  of  all  of  his  father's  more  im- 
portant contemporaries.  While  he  could  not  be 
called  a  bookish  man,  he  owned  most  of  the  vol- 
umes of  histrionic  criticism  and  of  theatrical 
biography  which  elucidate  the  history  of  the 
English-speaking  stage  in  the  first  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  Not  only  did  he  own  them, 
he  had  read  them;  and  by  their  aid  his  father's 
fellow-players  had  become  living  men  to  him. 
He  had  accumulated  anecdotes  about  them  and 
he  had  studied  out  their  methods.  As  he  had 
found  this  reading  instructive  as  well  as  interest- 
ing he  assumed  that  Irving  had  done  the  same; 
and  in  reviving  these  half-forgotten  figures,  al- 
ready going  into  the  night,  one  and  all.  Booth 
frankly  took  for  granted  Irving's  equal  intimacy 
with  them.  Apparently  Irving  saw  no  reason  to 
undeceive  him,  and  without  in  any  way  pretending 
to  an  exhaustive  acquaintance  with  careers  of  his 
renowned  predecessors,  he  was  able  to  throw  in 
from  time  to  time  an  apt  anecdote, — which  had 
probably  come  to  him  by  oral  tradition. 

Booth  was  three  years  older  than  Irving;  in 
1861  when  he  was  not  yet  thirty  and  already  a 
290 


MEMORIES  OF   EDWIN    BOOTH 

Star  of  proclaimed  promise,  he  paid  his  first  pro- 
fessional visit  to  England;  and  in  Manchester, 
Irving,  then  only  an  obscure  stock  actor,  sup- 
ported him.  A  score  of  years  later  when  Irving 
was  the  prosperous  manager  of  the  foremost 
theater  in  England,  Booth  again  ventured  across 
the  Atlantic  to  act  in  London.  His  season  was 
none  too  successful  financially,  partly  because  he 
had  unwisely  allowed  himself  to  be  taken  to  the 
wrong  theater.  With  characteristic  kindliness 
Irving  invited  Booth  to  join  him  for  a  month  at 
the  Lyceum  to  alternate  the  characters  of  Othello 
and  lago  and  to  have  the  aid  of  Ellen  Terry  as 
Desdemona.  This  was  in  the  spring  of  1881; 
and  for  four  weeks  the  Lyceum  was  crowded  to 
its  full  capacity. 

A  friend  of  mine,  who  had  played  one  of  the 
parts  in  the  tragedy,  described  the  rehearsals  to 
me  and  dwelt  on  the  unfailing  courtesy  with  which 
Irving,  as  the  host,  sought  always  to  make  Booth, 
as  the  guest,  feel  at  home.  Whenever  they  came 
to  a  scene  in  which  Booth  appeared,  Irving  would 
ask  how  he  would  prefer  to  have  the  action  ar- 
ranged; and  with  equal  courtesy  Booth  would 
leave  the  settling  of  the  business  to  Irving,  sug- 
gesting only  when  it  was  necessary.  "This  is 
the  way  I  usually  do  it."  My  friend  noticed  that 
Irving  seemed  surprized,  and  perhaps  even  a  little 
shockt,  that  Booth  set  so  little  store  by  the  details 
of  stage-management.  And  here  the  most  markt 
291 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

difference  between  these  two  great  actors  stood 
revealed. 

Booth  was  an  actor,  first  of  all,  and  he  was  a 
stage-manager  only  in  so  far  as  stage  manage- 
ment might  be  necessary  for  the  effect  which  he 
himself  desired  to  make  as  an  actor.  Perhaps  it 
would  not  be  fair  to  say  that  Irving  was  primarily 
a  stage-manager;  but  it  is  not  unfair  to  suggest 
that  he  was  a  stage-manager  of  extraordinary 
fertility  of  invention  and  that  he  was  accustomed 
to  use  his  skill  as  a  stage-manager  to  support  his 
efforts  as  an  actor.  Booth  was  always  careful 
about  his  own  effects,  his  own  business;  but  he 
relied  mainly  on  himself  and  upon  his  own  individ- 
ual power  as  an  actor.  So  it  was  that  he  was  less 
interested  in  the  play  as  a  whole  and  in  those 
scenes  in  which  he  did  not  himself  appear.  Irving, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  insistent  in  getting  the 
smallest  details  exactly  to  his  taste,  holding  with 
Michael  Angelo  that  "trifles  make  perfection, 
and  perfection  is  no  trifle."  Perhaps  this  differ- 
ence in  their  attitude  explains  why  it  was  that 
Booth  was  unsuccessful  in  the  management  of 
the  theater  he  had  built  for  himself  and  that 
Irving  managed  his  theater  triumphantly  for 
more  than  a  score  of  years. 

It  is  possible  that  Irving  never  himself  per- 
ceived how  truly  magnanimous  he  had  been  in 
inviting  Booth  to  appear  with  him  at  the  Lyceum. 
In  the  first  week  when  Booth  was  Othello  and 
292 


MEMORIES  OF   EDWIN    BOOTH 

Irving  lago  there  was  a  comparative  equality 
between  them.  Booth  had  the  ampHtude  of 
elocution  and  the  fiery  passion  which  Othello  de- 
manded; and  Irving  was  a  brilliant  and  pic- 
turesque lago.  But  the  second  week,  when  they 
exchanged  parts,  the  comparative  equality  dis- 
appeared. Fine  as  Booth  was  as  Othello  he  was 
even  finer  as  lago,  whom  he  represented  as  the 
incarnation  of  implacable  malignity,  whereas 
Irving  iackt  the  simple  utterance  and  the  mas- 
sive emotion  required  for  the  adequate  perform- 
ance of  Othello.  It  would  be  going  too  far  to 
suggest  that  Irving  failed  as  Othello;  he  was  too 
clever,  too  experienced  and  too  richly  endowed 
to  fail  in  anything  he  undertook.  Yet  it  may  be 
said  not  unfairly  that  his  Othello  was  among 
the  least  successful  of  his  Shaksperian  characters, 
ranking  with  his  spasmodic  Romeo  and  far  below 
his  graceful  and  noble  Hamlet. 


Ill 

It  was  after  Irving's  first  visit  to  the  United 
States  that  he  took  part  in  a  discussion  with  Co- 
quelin  as  to  the  completeness  with  which  the 
actor  ought  actually  to  feel  the  emotion  he  is  ex- 
pressing. Coquelin  had  declared  that  Diderot's 
'Paradox  on  Acting' — to  the  effect  that  the  per- 
former must  have  felt  the  emotion  while  he  is 
studying  the  part  but  that  he  must  not  feel  it 
293 


THE   PRINCIPLES  OF    PLAYMAKING 

too  acutely  on  the  stage  or  it  will  interfere  with 
his  certainty  of  execution — Coquelin  had  declared 
that  this  was  not  a  paradox,  but  only  a  plain 
statement  of  the  indisputable  fact.  Irving  had 
denied  this,  asserting  that  the  actor  needs  to  be 
moved  by  the  actual  passion  when  he  is  express- 
ing it.  I  recall  that  Joseph  Jefferson  told  me 
that  he  thought  they  were  both  right,  each  from 
his  own  point  of  view,  and  each  advocating  the 
method  he  himself  had  found  satisfactory — Co- 
quelin merely  recalling  the  emotion  he  had  origi- 
nally felt  and  Irving  allowing  himself  to  feel  it 
again  and  again  as  amply  as  he  could. 

When  I  spoke  to  Booth  about  Diderot's  '  Para- 
dox,' he  said  that  he  thought  that  there  was  more 
in  it  than  Irving  was  willing  to  admit;  and  he 
illustrated  this  opinion  by  an  experience  of  his 
own.  One  night  when  he  was  acting  in  the 
'Fool's  Revenge,'  he  saw  his  daughter  sitting  in  a 
stage-box;  and  this  reminded  him  that  he,  like 
Bertuccio,  had  an  only  daughter  whom  he  loved 
devotedly.  This  thought  kept  recurring  as  the 
play  advanced;  and  he  was  conscious  that  his 
own  paternal  affection  was  making  him  identify 
himself  more  than  ever  before  with  the  hunch- 
back father  whom  he  was  portraying.  He  found 
that  he  was  putting  himself  into  the  place  of  Ber- 
tuccio and  asking  how  he  would  feel  if  his  own 
daughter,  then  before  his  eyes,  had  the  sorrowful 
fate  of  the  heroine  of  the  play.  It  had  seemed 
294 


MEMORIES   OF   EDWIN    BOOTH 

to  him  that,  as  a  result  of  this  intensified  per- 
sonal emotion,  he  had  never  acted  the  character 
with  so  much  poignancy  of  pathos.  Yet  when  his 
daughter  took  him  home  in  a  carriage,  she  askt 
what  had  been  the  matter  with  him  that  evening, 
since  she  had  never  seen  him  impersonate  Ber- 
tuccio  so  inefiFectively.  Here  was  a  case  where 
excess  of  actual  feeling  had  interfered  with  the 
self-control  needed  for  the  complete  artistic  ex- 
pression of  the  emotion. 

Irving  may  have  exprest  his  opinion  with  more 
emphasis  than  was  warranted;  and  Coquelin  was 
quite  as  intolerant  in  maintaining  his.  I  must 
confess  that  I  thought  Coquelin  a  little  extreme  in 
his  insistence  on  the  necessity  of  absolute  freedom 
from  emotion  when  the  actor  was  before  the  audi- 
ence. In  one  of  our  many  talks  about  the  art  of 
acting,  he  once  went  so  far  as  to  assert  that  after 
he  had  seen  a  certain  actress  shed  real  tears  at  a 
moment  of  emotional  tension,  this  accomplisht 
performer  immediately  sank  in  his  estimation, 
since  her  weeping  seemed  to  him  to  reveal  an 
absence  of  the  complete  self-control  which  a  fine 
artist  ought  always  to  possess. 

Booth's  famous  father,  so  his  son  has  recorded, 
endeavored  always  to  sink  his  own  personality 
in  that  of  the  character  he  was  performing. 
"Whatever  the  part  he  had  to  impersonate,  he 
was,  from  the  time  of  its  rehearsal  until  he  slept 
at  nfght,  imbued  with  its  very  essence.  If 
295 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

'Othello'  was  billed  for  the  evening,  he  would,  per- 
haps, wear  a  crescent  pin  on  his  breast  that  day. 
...  If  Shylock  was  to  be  his  part  at  night,  he 
was  a  Jew  all  day;  and,  if  in  Baltimore  at  the 
time,  he  would  pass  hours  with  a  learned  Israelite, 
discussing  Hebrew  history."  During  the  actual 
performance  of  one  of  these  mighty  characters 
with  which  he  had  thus  sought  to  identify  him- 
self, he  was  possest  by  the  passion  which  surged 
from  the  progressive  situations  of  the  play.  "At 
the  instant  of  intense  emotion,  when  the  specta- 
tors were  enthralled  by  his  magnetic  influence 
...  he  would  whisper  some  silliness  or  make  a 
face"  while  his  head  was  turned  from  the  audience. 
His  fellow-actors  attributed  his  conduct  at  such 
times  to  lack  of  feeling,  whereas  it  was  in  reality, 
so  Edwin  Booth  testified,  due  to  his  "extreme 
excess  of  feeling." 

IV 

In  1884  Laurence  Hutton  and  I  made  prepara- 
tions to  edit  a  book  about  the  theater  upon  a 
novel  plan;  and  a  year  or  two  later  we  sent  forth 
at  intervals  the  five  volumes  entitled  'Actors  and 
Actresses  of  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States, 
from  the  days  of  David  Garrick  to  the  present 
time.'  We  carefully  selected  about  eighty  per- 
formers of  acknowledged  prominence,  each  in  his 
own  generation;  and  we  wrote  ourselves  or  had 
written  by  experts  in  histrionic  history,  brief  but 
296 


MEMORIES   OF    EDWIN    BOOTH 

carefully  documented  biographies,  appending  to 
the  sketch  of  every  performer's  career  excerpts 
from  contemporary  dramatic  criticism,  from  mem- 
oirs and  reminiscences,  and  from  collections  of 
theatrical  anecdotes,  so  as  to  depict  from  several 
angles  the  men  and  women  who  were  sitting  for 
their  portraits.  Our  friends  came  generously  to 
our  assistance,  more  especially  those  devoted 
students  of  stage-history,  William  Winter  and 
William  Archer.  Austin  Dobson  enricht  our  first 
volume  with  a  delightful  account  of  the  varied 
activities  of  David  Garrick;  and  H.  C,  Bunner 
contributed  to  our  fifth  volume  an  equally  de- 
lightful account  of  Joseph  Jefferson. 

The  article  on  Edwin  Booth  was  prepared  by 
Lawrence  Barrett;  and  Edwin  Booth  himself  was 
to  prepare  that  on  his  father.  Irving  willingly 
agreed  to  write  the  paper  on  Edmund  Kean;  but 
when  the  time  came  he  askt  us  to  release  him 
from  his  promise.  So  we  turned  to  Edwin  Booth 
again  and  requested  him  to  give  us  the  sketch  of 
Kean  to  accompany  that  which  he  had  already 
written  on  Kean's  sometime  rival,  Junius  Brutus 
Booth;  and  he  allowed  himself  to  be  persuaded. 
I  think  that  the  writing  of  these  two  papers  was 
Edwin  Booth's  first  venture  into  literature,  since 
his  valuable  notes  on  the  acting  of  Othello  and  of 
Shylock  were  prepared  a  little  later.  To  write 
was  for  him  a  novel  experience,  and  he  was 
modestly  diffident,  postponing  the  unwonted 
297 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

task  until  at  last  the  spirit  moved  him;  then  he 
sat  himself  down  to  the  work  and  poured  forth  his 
unpremeditated  recollections  of  his  father  with  the 
precipitancy  with  which  he  might  write  a  letter. 

Even  after  he  had  set  down  what  was  in  his 
heart  he  hesitated  to  let  the  manuscript  pass  out 
of  his  own  hands.  When  Hutton  was  at  last  em- 
powered to  carry  it  off,  he  brought  it  to  me; 
and  it  made  glad  our  editorial  souls.  It  was  not 
at  all  in  accord  with  the  pattern  accepted  by  the 
professional  writers  who  had  prepared  the  articles 
for  the  earlier  volumes.  It  did  not  give  the  facts 
of  its  subject's  career  in  strict  chronological  se- 
quence, with  the  obligatory  dates  in  their  proper 
places.  It  contained  no  dates  and  only  a  few 
facts;  but  it  did  give  what  was  better  than  all  the 
panoply  of  information, — an  illuminating  inter- 
pretation of  an  extraordinary  character  by  the 
one  person  who  knew  him  best  and  loved  him 
most. 

It  was  thrown  on  paper  in  haste;  it  had  not 
been  modified  by  second  thoughts;  its  sentences 
were  sometimes  entangled;  and  its  punctuation 
was  eccentric.  But  these  external  inadvertences 
were  negligible.  To  precede  Booth's  tribute  to 
his  father  and  to  be  distinguisht  from  it  by  a 
difference  of  type,  we  prepared  an  outline  biog- 
raphy of  Junius  Brutus  with  all  the  missing  facts 
and  all  the  obligatory  dates;  and  we  then  had 
Booth's  own  manuscript  copied  faithfully,  where- 
298 


MEMORIES   OF    EDWIN    BOOTH 

upon  we  made  the  few  adjustments  necessary  to 
bring  it  into  conformity  with  the  conventions 
of  literature.  The  result  stood  forth  as  an  ad- 
mirable piece  of  writing,  individual  in  expression, 
full  of  flavor,  and  rich  in  sympathetic  understand- 
ing. It  may  be  noted  that  actors,  when  they  can 
write  at  all,  generally  write  well,  perhaps  because 
their  profession  has  trained  them  to  avoid  prolix- 
ity while  its  practice  has  stored  their  memory 
with  a  vocabulary  as  varied  as  it  is  vigorous. 

Encouraged  by  our  editorial  appreciation,  Ed- 
win Booth  wrote  out  for  us  his  impressions  of 
Kean,  inspired  in  some  measure  by  the  study  of 
Kean's  death-mask.  He  told  us  that  altho  Ed- 
mund Kean  and  Junius  Brutus  Booth  had  been 
rivals  in  London,  there  was  no  personal  enmity  in 
their  contest  for  the  crown,  and  when  they  came 
together  again  in  America  their  meeting  was  not 
only  friendly  but  cordial.  That  the  two  great 
actors  were  not  hostile  to  each  other  was  made 
certain  by  this  glowing  tribute  to  Edmund  Kean 
written  by  the  son  of  Junius  Brutus  Booth,  as  it 
had  been  made  probable  years  before  by  the  ap- 
pearance of  Junius  Brutus  Booth  as  the  Second 
Actor  in  support  of  the  Hamlet  of  Edmund  Kean's 
son. 

Doubtful  as  Edwin  Booth  had  been  as  to  his 

ability  to  put  on  paper  adequately  his  impressions 

of  Kean  and  Booth,  he  was  keenly  interested  in 

their  reception  by  his  friends  after  they  were 

299 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

printed  in  the  third  volume  of  our  'Actors  and 
Actresses.'  In  the  correspondence  lovingly  col- 
lected by  his  daughter  he  is  constantly  mention- 
ing his  "little  sketches,"  anxious  to  learn  what  his 
friends  thought  of  them.  As  an  actor  he  was  sur- 
feited with  newspaper  criticism  and  he  had  come 
to  pay  little  attention  to  it;  but  as  a  writer  he 
wanted  to  see  every  journalistic  review  of  our 
volume  which  might  comment  on  his  two  contri- 
butions. It  is  amusing;  in  fact,  it  is  almost 
pathetic,  to  note  the  new  interest  which  the 
writing  of  these  two  articles  had  brought  into  his 
life  when  he  was  beginning  to  be  wearied,  and  to 
observe  the  eagerness  with  which  he  awaited  any 
casual  comment  on  what  he  had  written.-  I  am 
glad  to  be  able  to  record  that  the  two  brief  essays 
were  highly  valued  by  those  most  competent  to 
appreciate  them. 


One  of  the  most  intelligent  and  accomplisht 
actors  of  the  present  day  has  made  it  a  rule  not 
to  read  the  incessant  newspaper  notices  of  his  per- 
formance; and  he  once  gave  me  an  excellent  rea- 
son for  his  decision: — "If  the  criticism  is  un- 
friendly, it  is  likely  to  disturb  me  at  my  work, — 
and  if  it  is  friendly  it  is  likely  to  increase  my 
natural  conceit !"  1  think  that  this  would  have 
won  the  approval  of  Edwin  Booth.  I  recall 
that  when  I  once  askt  him  if  he  had  ever  been 
300 


MEMORIES  OF   EDWIN    BOOTH 

benefited  by  any  of  the  criticisms  of  his  acting, 
he  responded  at  once  "Never!"  Then,  after  a 
moment's  pause  and  with  his  good-humored  smile 
he  added,  "That's  not  quite  true.  Sometimes,  in 
one  of  the  little  cities,  the  theatrical  critic  points 
out  that  I  have  been  careless  in  the  performance 
of  this  scene  or  that;  and  sometimes  I  have  seen 
that  he  was  right.  But  that  is  the  only  benefit 
I  ever  got  from  anything  of  the  sort." 

He  held  that  it  was  not  good  for  the  actor  to 
associate  with  those  whose  duty  it  was  to  criticize 
his  artistic  endeavors.  For  this  reason  he  sug- 
gested that  critics  of  acting  should  not  be  ad- 
mitted to  The  Players;  and  to  this  day  and  after 
thirty  years  that  is  the  unwritten  law  of  the  club 
he  founded.  He  regretted  greatly  that  this  rul- 
ing excluded  his  cherisht  friend,  William  Win- 
ter; but  he  did  not  wish  us  to  make  a  single 
exception.  I  believe  that  it  "was  in  his  thought 
that  it  would  be  unfortunate  if  the  actor  should 
be  tempted  to  make  up  to  the  critics  and  to  get 
on  the  blind  side  of  them,  so  to  speak.  Perhaps  he 
had  also  in  mind  two  other  reasons  for  his  request. 
The  first  is  that  artists  of  all  kinds,  and  perhaps 
the  actors  more  especially,  are  prone  to  express 
exaggerated  opinions  of  one  another's  work, 
opinions  extravagantly  favorable  and  some- 
times extravagantly  unfavorable; — opinions  which 
it  would  be  undesirable  to  have  overheard  by  out- 
siders. And  the  second  is  that  as  the  actor's 
301 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

canvas  on  which  he  paints  his  picture  and  the 
actor's  clay  with  which  he  models  his  statue,  are 
his  own  person,  his  own  features,  his  own  members, 
any  criticism  of  his  achievement,  or  of  his  failure 
to  achieve,  is  necessarily  personal, — possibly  so 
personal  as  to  make  it  unpleasant  for  artist  and 
critic  to  have  to  sit  at  meat  together. 

It  was  after  he  made  his  home  at  The  Players — 
where  the  room  in  which  he  lived  and  died  is 
piously  kept  exactly  as  he  left  it — that  I  had  more 
frequent  opportunities  of  meeting  him.  He 
liked  to  come  down  to  the  reading-room  and  the 
dining-room  and  to  mingle  freely  with  his  fellow- 
members,  and  to  have  them  accept  him  as  one  of 
themselves  and  not  set  him  apart  as  the  Founder 
of  the  club.  As  it  chanced  he  used  to  spend  at 
least  a  portion  of  the  later  summers  of  his  life 
with  his  daughter  at  Narragansett  Pier,  almost 
exactly  opposite  my  own  summer  home.  Some- 
times he  came  over  to  see  us  and  sometimes  we 
went  over  to  call  on  him. 

I  regret  now  that  I  did  not  make  notes  of  the 
more  interesting  things  he  said  in  one  or  another 
of  our  talks.  I  can  recapture  only  a  few  of  them. 
He  told  me  that  the  conditions  of  the  theater  were 
very  primitive  when  he  first  began  to  act  in  sup- 
port of  his  father;  and  in  'Richard  III,'  for  in- 
stance, when  the  time  came  for  Richard  to  fight 
Richmond,  his  father  used  to  go  to  the  wings  on 
one  side  of  the  stage  as  the  actor  of  Richmond 
302 


MEMORIES  OF   EDWIN   BOOTH 

went  to  the  wings  on  the  other  side;  and  each  of 
them  seized  by  the  hilt  a  combat-sword  thrust 
out  by  an  invisible  stage-hand,  whereupon  they 
went  back  to  the  center  of  the  stage  and  began 
their  fight  to  the  death.  He  also  confest  that 
he  had  been  inclined  to  doubt  the  wisdom  of  his 
having  discarded  Colley  Gibber's  perversion  of 
*  Richard  1 1 1 ' — a  fiery  and  bombastic  adaptation 
which  had  held  the  stage  for  two  centuries  and 
which  was  really  more  effective  theatrically  than 
the  reverent  rearrangement  of  Shakspere's  own 
text  which  Booth  had  substituted  for  it. 

I  happened  once  to  mention  Irving's  taking 
Ellen  Terry  and  his  whole  company  to  West 
Point  to  play  the  'Merchant  of  Venice'  in  the 
Mess  Hall  on  a  platform  draped  only  with  Amer- 
ican flags  and  therefore  without  any  scenery; 
and  I  remarkt  that  Irving  had  assured  me  that 
the  power  of  the  play  was  in  no  wise  lessened  by 
the  enforced  deprivation  of  all  decorative  aid. 
To  cap  this  Booth  told  me  about  his  unexpected 
misadventure  at  Waterbury.  He  arrived  at  the 
theater  to  be  informed  that  the  costumes  had 
not  been  delivered.  Scenery  and  properties 
had  come  all  right,  but  the  trunks  containing 
the  dresses  for  'Hamlet'  could  not  be  found. 
Booth  inquired  about  the  advance  sale  of  tickets 
and  learnt  that  every  seat  had  been  sold.  "Very 
well,  then,"  he  said,  "we  must  not  disappoint  an 
audience.  We'll  give  the  play  in  the  clothes  we 
303 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

have  on!"  When  the  time  came  he  sent  the 
manager  before  the  curtain  to  explain  the  situation 
and  to  announce  that  any  spectator  who  was  not 
satisfied  with  the  prospect  could  have  his  money 
back  from  the  box-office. 

"Of  course,  nobody  left  the  house/'  he  com- 
mented smiling.  "But  you  should  have  seen  the 
fright  of  the  company — especially  the  women — 
at  the  idea  of  appearing  in  a  Shaksperian  tragedy 
in  the  dresses  they  wore  to  travel  in.  They  got 
over  that,  as  soon  as  they  found  that  the  effect 
of  strangeness  quickly  wore  off.  After  the  first 
act,  Robert  Pateman,  who  did  not  appear  as  the 
Gravedigger  until  the  fifth  act,  and  who  had 
gone  in  front  to  judge  the  effect,  came  round  be- 
hind to  reassure  his  wife,  who  was  our  Ophelia. 
He  explained  that  there  were  little  runs  of 
laughter  every  now  and  then  during  the  opening 
scenes  but  that  these  soon  died  down,  until 
toward  the  end  of  the  act  the  performance  was  ap- 
parently as  effective  as  if  we  had  all  been  garbed 
with  historic  propriety.  It  was  an  odd  experience, 
— and  perhaps  the  most  amusing  part  of  it  was 
that  the  trunks  containing  the  costumes  were 
discovered  at  last  in  a  heap  outside  the  railroad 
station  1" 

On  another  occasion  he  told  me  about  a  little 

discussion  he  had  had  with  Jefferson  when  '  Rip 

Van    Winkle'    was    first    produced    at    Booth's 

Theater.     He  had  wanted  his  old  friend  to  be 

304 


MEMORIES   OF   EDWIN    BOOTH 

pleased  and  he  had  prepared  entirely  new  scenery. 
The  set  for  the  first  act,  the  home  from  which  Rip 
is  to  be  driven  out  by  his  shrewish  wife,  was  a 
careful  reconstitution  of  a  characteristic  kitchen 
in  a  Catskill  farmhouse,  with  a  kettle  swinging  on 
a  crane  before  a  glowing  fire.  But  at  the  dress 
rehearsal  when  Jefferson  made  his  entrance,  he 
stopt  short  and  called  out  sharply  "Take  that 
thing  away  !" — that  thing  was  the  gas-log  blazing 
brightly;  "I  don't  want  people  to  be  looking  at 
that.  I  want  them  to  look  at  me!"  The  re- 
hearsal waited  while  the  objectionable  distraction 
was  removed.  When  the  first  act  had  been  gone 
thru,  Booth  called  Jefferson's  attention  to  the 
black  gap  where  the  log  had  been  and  he  askt 
if  that  might  not  draw  the  eyes  of  the  spectators 
away  from  Rip's  features.  "Perhaps  you  are 
right,"  Jefferson  admitted;  "have  the  log  put 
back — but  don't  light  it.  1  don't  want  it  to  sparkle 
and  hiss." 

Fifty  years  ago  a  gas-log  was  a  novelty  and  it 
might  have  diverted  the  gaze  and  thereby  inter- 
fered momentarily  with  the  current  of  dramatic 
sympathy.  Of  course,  it  was  not  personal  vanity, 
but  a  due  respect  for  art,  which  led  Jefferson  to 
declare  that  he  wanted  people  to  look  at  him  all 
the  time.  When  he  played  Rip  the  true  center  of 
interest  was  Rip's  ever-changing  countenance. 

Unless  my  memory  plays  me  false  it  was  in  this 
same  conversation  with  Booth  that  he  told  me  of 
305 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF    PLAYMAKING 

a  remark  Charlotte  Cushman  had  made  to  him 
when  they  were  rehearsing  'Macbeth.'  "You 
must  not  be  afraid  of  overdoing  the  part,"  she  had 
said.  "  Remember  that  Macbeth  is  the  father  of 
all  the  stage-villains !" 

(1919.) 


306 


;^*' 


NOV  3. 


Date  Due 


NOV   X3  1962 


M^  1  6 


nJ73 


JUN  1 ;:  1973  y 


OCT     :.  1973 


JUL  I'.  0  1973  7 


Library  Bureau  Cat.  No.  1137 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

■"■" ■■iniiiiiir" 


AA    001  260  979  8 


